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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 





nixe Autobiography 
of Mary J ane 

BY 

MART JANE 



<7he Christopher Publishing House 
Boston, U. S. A. 


Copyright 1924 

By The Christopher Publishing House 


©Cl A7C6962 


(made INAMERICA’i 





DEDICATION 


This book is dedicated to those who had a part in 
the events recorded in these pages. 

I am sorry they did not furnish me better material. 
If they read this book they must not resent anything 
I say they did,, but regret that they did not furnish 
better thought and conduct. 

Respectfully , 

Mary Jane. 







TABLE OF CONTENTS 


Chapter Page 

I. Romance . 9 

II. Proposal . 16 

III. The Renewal of Friendship. 29 

IV. Synod Opens . 27 

V. The Visit After Synod. 32 

VI. Honeymoon . 38 

VII. Secretaries . 43 

VIII. Ghosts . 60 

IX. Puppets . 67 

X. Music and Musicians. 75 

XI. Form and Piety. 81 

XII. Experiences . 89 

XIII. The Evangelist .100 

XIV. A New Home.107 

XV. In a New Land. 103 



























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I 




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The Autobiography of Mary Jane 

CHAPTER I. 

ROMANCE 

Parent of golden dreams. Romance! 

Auspices queen of childish joys, 

Who leadest along in airy dance, 

Thy votive train of girls and boys. 

In giving one’s life experience, there is little that 
is of no importance to other people, because one can 
get good out of everybody’s even trifling experiences. 
The place and date of one’s birth is considered of suf¬ 
ficient importance by the compilers of “Who’s Who” 
to be inserted in every biography. The old tomb¬ 
stones are explicit in giving the date of one’s birth 
and death. Of course the date of one’s birth and 
death are two important events in every life. The 
one records the birth of opportunity, the other the 
consummation, regardless of whether that consum¬ 
mation is enrichment or bankruptcy of character. 

The first ten years of a girl’s life are quite as im¬ 
portant as the same period of time in a boy’s life. 
It is quite as difficult to tear up habits by the root 
when a girl is in her teens as it is in the life of her 
brother. On the other hand, who can ever make up 
the loss which comes to either sex, the early mis¬ 
spent years? Without saying much of the habits 
I formed in my girlhood, it is sufficient for me to 
say that I made up my mind to take life as easily as 
I could. I resolved—whether that resolution was 
the fruit of what I saw about me in the homes of 
the poor, or whether it was instilled by my mother, 
I am not even now able to determine — that I 


10 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

would never marry a poor man or one who had not 
fair prospects of amassing a fortune. I somehow be¬ 
lieved that the possession of money was the one 
essential to happiness, a mistake more common in 
our day than in my youth, when great fortunes were 
a rarity. I also determined never to load myself 
with the burdens of other people. You can there¬ 
fore imagine my surprise, as well as the surprise of 
my girl friends, when I found myself corresponding 
with a theological student, who was already licensed 
to preach the gospel for one year. 

This correspondence came about in this way: 
One day when I was still in my teens I received a 
letter containing the letterhead of a prominent 
theological seminary. The writer said he had seen 
my photo in the home of my cousin, and hoped ere 
long to meet me. He was then already booked to 
preach a sermon in the pulpit of my own home 
church. He asked me whether I would enter into 
a correspondence wth him; he would feel more at 
home when he arrived in my home town. Of course 
I could have left that letter unanswered, but I had 
just enough romance in my nature to answer it. 

In due time my theological friend arrived, and 
you can well imagine the surprise of my girl friends 
when they saw me come to church with a strange 
young preacher who was to fill our pulpit that par¬ 
ticular Sunday evening. After that evening they 
saw us together frequently. I am not sure whether 
they envied me or wished to save me from the “slings 
and arrows” of the years of a life wedded to a capti¬ 
ous and fault-finding congregation. 

They told me I was too proud, too fond of dress 
for a preacher’s wife. I would cause my husband 
endless trouble if I snubbed some people and made 
friends with others in the congregations to which 
my husband might be called. My gentlemen friends 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


11 


pictured me sitting in the pastor's pew, up front, 
with my hands demurely folded, and my eyes wor- 
shipfully fixed upon my pastor, whilst every woman 
in the, congregation studied my hat, my dress, the 
way I had of gathering mischievous curls that per¬ 
sisted in playing hide and seek about my ears. They 
said my church would be the rendezvous for young 
men; and they would not be surprised if a bald- 
headed row would become a prominent feature in 
my husband's church, provided I continued the flirt 
they knew me to be. Of course I never was a flirt, 
and I am simply giving you the details in the hope 
that they may encourage young girls not to give up 
in the matrimonial race if they should catch up with 
some grave theological student. I have frequently 
known people who were considered mischievous 
young girls to become model preachers' wives. 

In those days I did not think seriously of any 
matrimonial entanglement with my student friend. 
He was a poor man, evidently, or he would not be 
studying for the ministry. In those days it was an 
uncommon thing to find a young man from an opu¬ 
lent family in a theological seminary, just as it is 
an extreme rarity now. There are a number of rea¬ 
sons for this, but chief among them is the lack of 
piety in those homes. 

I believed when I entered into correspondence with 
this theological student that he was necessarily poor 
in the world's goods, because I associated respectable 
poverty with every one who chose the ministry for 
his life work. I believed also that he would always 
remain poor. It was therefore a surprise to me 
whenever I took time to think it over that I should 
be in correspondence, much less marry a man of his 
class. I was no more matrimonially inclined be¬ 
cause of my correspondence with this preacher than 
I thought of a matrimonial entanglement with a 


12 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

certain young farmer, rich in houses and lands, but 
woefully poor in the nice little attentions and dainty 
courtesies which my theological friend unconsciously 
lavished upon me. It is true I found pleasure in his 
company more than in the company of any other 
young man of my acquaintance, but I determined 
never to fall in love with him simply and solely be¬ 
cause he was a preacher. 

It was about this time that I began to feel a special 
interest in my own pastor’s wife. Unconsciously I 
cultivated her intimate acquaintance, which soon 
ripened into friendship. I rejoiced with her in her 
little triumphs and sympathized with her in her 
trials and humiliations. At such times I pictured 
myself a pastor’s wife. The more I knew of her ex¬ 
periences and the more closely associated with her 
I became, the more I determined that I must break 
off my correspondence with my preacher friend. Let 
me tell you something of her experience, and then 
you will be prepared for the conclusion of my own 
romance. 

I often commiserated her in her attempt to eke 
out her husband’s salary in keeping the parsonage 
nicely furnished and her children comfortably and 
even stylishly clothed. I knew, because of close 
association, of the many sad, and of the happy, 
and sometimes laughable and ludicrous experiences 
with which her life abounded. She had been a mere 
girl when she came to our church with her husband. 
It was his first charge. There are two classes of 
women in our congregation and in every one with 
which I have ever been associated—the condoners 
and the condemners. No matter how many mistakes 
she made, how often she forgot to shake hands, or 
omitted thanking them for the nice loaf of bread 
and the pie, the butter or the beef, some of their 
number had taken to her during the previous week; 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


13 


they did not appear in the least hurt; they were just 
as friendly and helpful afterwards as before. Those 
condoners were a small company, but they were a 
company of women with whom the angels stopped 
for refreshments when they visited the church, 
which I imagine they seldom did. These condon¬ 
ers under the motherly influence of their sweet char¬ 
ity turned my pastor’s wife’s failures into real 
achievements. Their company was necessarily 
small, because so few of the women cared to be 
immersed into the river of divine unselfishness, 
cared to strip off the garb of their selfishness and 
self-righteousness, so that they might be clothed in 
the white robe of humility and self-abnegation. 

The other society, the condemners and knockers, 
had a much larger membership. Every woman, 
young and old, belonged to that society, so it seemed 
to me. Every year of her husband’s pastorate in 
our church that society increased in membership. 

They held frequent meetings, every Monday after 
their most pressing household duties were attended 
to, they were in each other’s back yard or at the 
telephone exchanging comment on the services of 
the Sabbath preceding. 

"Did you see the preacher’s wife in her new hat 
yesterday ?” 

"Yes. Isn’t it a fright? You can tell she made 
it herself. The rim is turned entirely too high. 
What became of the feather she used to droop so 
cunningly over every hat for the last six years ?” 

"Did you see that feather? She recurled it, cut 
off the worn ends and fixed it on little Patience’s 
hat.” 

Patience is their oldest daughter. 

"I pity that child. She has nothing new or at¬ 
tractive. Dresses, hats, and even stockings made 
over and made over until you can scarcely tell that 


14 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

they belonged to her mother, and My! He gets a 
big salary, nearly half as much as my own husband.” 

“How did you like the sermon yesterday, and 
what did you think of his necktie? Under one ear, 
as usual. Last Sunday I stopped him in the vesti¬ 
bule long enough to say 'Good morning/ and I ad¬ 
justed his tie.” 

“Had you done that? I did the same thing the 
Sunday before, but, do you know, I think his wife 
resents it.” 

This is simply a specimen of the employment of 
the knockers. They acted on the principle that a 
fault uncriticized and uncondemned grows two there¬ 
by, and so, like all fault-finders, they were always 
on the hunt, exaggerating the inability in little 
things until in their eyes, at least, it became a great 
fault. 

Just accidentally, two of the little society of con- 
doners meet. This is their conversation:— 

“Well, Dorcas, how did you like the sermon yes¬ 
terday ?” 

“What fine, helpful discourses they were, both 
morning and evening. I think our pastor must draw 
on the experiences in his own life. His home-life is 
so rich in affection and everyone seems so helpful to 
everybody. His home is very tastefully, though not 
richly furnished. Every rug seems to be just where 
it should be, and every piece of furniture is always 
in its place. You can tell that his wife is a neat, 
frugal housekeeper from the way everybody in the 
family is dressed. She can make a little go a great 
way and use everything to the best advantage. She 
makes new dresses and new hats out of old ones.” 

“Yes, she is a model wife for a preacher.” 

I heard constantly comments like these, and it 
made me shiver to think that I might be made the 
target for everyone to shoot their arrows. I knew 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


15 


that every pound of sausage or butter or lard re¬ 
ceived by my pastor's wife, even though wrapped in 
tissue and with blue ribbon, was labeled “for re¬ 
spectable poverty.” 

This was in the earlier experiences of my pastor's 
wife. Of late years most congregations have dis¬ 
continued “donations, surprise parties” and some 
other attentions that made pastors and their wives 
glad and sad, glad because of the spirit displayed in 
many of the participants, sad because of the mean, 
niggardly spirit displayed by others. Many a half 
peck of dried apples was disguised to give it the ap¬ 
pearance of a package of dry goods. The wrapper 
always bore the name of some dry goods emporium, 
and so disguised the stingy spirit in which the dona¬ 
tion was made from the prying eyes of others just 
as mean and stingy. A three-pound sack of corn 
meal properly wrapped with a sheet or two of cot¬ 
ton batting was made to feel mighty much like a 
woolen blanket, even to the critical touch of an in¬ 
quisitive “knocker,” and the whole was most ac¬ 
ceptable to the people of the manse. 

Since preachers' salaries have been raised ten, 
twenty or even thirty per cent, whilst the ordinary 
mechanic exacts from three to five times what he 
received before the days of “unions.” Congrega¬ 
tions say, “We pay our preacher and do not pauper¬ 
ize him.” So the good old days of the donations and 
surprises are no more. 

In some charges of two or three congregations, 
where the pastor lives in town, the custom of sub¬ 
scribing five or ten dollars to his salary by the coun¬ 
try members and taking six or a dozen meals in the 
manse during the year, still remains one of the 
pleasant experiences of some pastors' wives. “It is 
more blessed to give than to receive”—for a pastor's 
wife—provided she has something to give, but it is 
mighty unhandy when the larder is empty. 


16 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


CHAPTER H. 

PROPOSAL 

“Alas! how easily things go wrong! 

A sigh too deep or a kiss too long. 

And then comes a mist and a weeping rain, 

And life is never the same again.” 

What to me seemed a trifling matter, was regard¬ 
ed most seriously by my student friend. A party of 
young people decided to visit some friends in the 
town in which was located the theological seminary 
my corespondent attended. I, myself, had several 
relatives in the town, and it was perfectly proper for 
me to go with my friends on this trip. 

There is something inscrutably delightful in a 
girl's way of doing one thing, whilst she at the same 
time is planning something quite different. I planned 
the trip in order to see my student friend. The 
young man who was my special escort in the party 
thought I wished to be in his company. Because he 
thought so he was anxious for the trip. It was a 
delightful morning in May, the month when love and 
butterflies are born. We had not proceeded far on 
our journey of thirty miles before he became de¬ 
lightfully confidential. He told me his plans and 
prospects, and then in a matter-of-fact way, as we 
were driving along the country highway, he told me 
that I held a dominant place in his life-plans. The 
very home he was planning was to cater to my 
tastes. He knew me and my home-life, and he knew 
exactly what would make me happy. 

It was a proposal. It was not a passionate declara¬ 
tion of his undying affection for me. It flattered 
me. It is an uncommon event to meet a woman who, 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


17 


if put into the confessional of her own conscience, 
would not admit that she felt flattered by any and 
every proposal she ever had. Especially is this true 
when the proposal comes from a man in whose com¬ 
pany she has taken pleasure, and with whose atten¬ 
tions she is gratified. There was one aspiration in 
my life—it was that I really hoped to be married 
some day to a veritable poem of a man and not to a 
piece of prose bordering on a tragedy. 

Of course if I had really and heartily loved this 
young farmer, I would not have taken time to an¬ 
alyze my feelings or to test his. True love leaps into 
the arms of its adoration, even before they are wide 
open. It snugly and self-complacently coddles in its 
passion, asking no questions and tolerating none. 

I do not wish any one to think that I despised 
the farmer or his calliing. The race began in a man 
who was a gardener, and it would have continued 
supremely happy if his wife would have always 
worked by his side instead of going off by herself 
to flirt with the devil. My child, if you know some¬ 
one who has not converted his nose into a 
smoke flue and his lips into a cigarette holder 
and who has not made a whiskey flask his cordial 
companion, and you fall in love with him, marry him. 
Our best and most energetic men have always come 
from the country, and the city's life is quickened by 
their wholesome energy; and the city's atmosphere 
is kept from being too fetid by their presence, just 
as the bouquet of roses brings hope and perfume 
into the sick room. 

I told my farmer friend his proposal was too seri¬ 
ous a matter to be decided in a moment. He told 
me I really had had time. We had been in each 
other's company many happy evenings for two whole 
years. 

It had taken him just that long to make up 


18 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

his mind, I told him, and although he had been very 
patient in studying me, but now that patience might 
have her perfect work, he must wait a while longer, 
whilst I studied him in just as serious a mode as he 
had studied me. 

Of course he argued—forgot the logic he had used 
when he spoke of the home he had planned and his 
intention of installing me its mistress. He became 
sentimental and I dictatorial. Meanwhile our jour¬ 
ney was ended, and the greeting and company of our 
friends put an end to what was decidedly unfinished. 

That same evening my student friend called. I 
introduced him to every one in the company whom 
he did not already know, and to the man who had 
that day proposed marriage to me. He seemed to 
know intuitively that Cupid had aimed his shaft at 
my friend, who unconsciously had brought me to the 
seat of learning in order that I might learn more of 
my student friend. 

I knew, too, that my friend was trying 
to determine whether I as well as my escort 
was stricken perhaps fatally by the same shaft from 
Cupid's bow. Then, too, I saw him study me for 
more personal reasons. A poet once said, “A wom¬ 
an's crowning glory is her hair," but the crown to 
that crowning glory is a bewitching hat. Of course, 
the poet could not make the crown of glory a hat. 
He would have been no poet at all; he would have 
been a mere man. My hair always afforded me a 
reason for self-congratulation; but this particular 
hat I wore on this occasion was the divinest concep¬ 
tion of the milliner’s art, and a source of extreme 
satisfaction to myself. I think I saw the twinkle of 
satisfaction in my student's eye as he furtively 
studied both hat and hair, or hair and hat; I am not 
sure of the order. 

Did you ever try to make a company believe that 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP HART JANE 


19 


you were interested in their conversation and that 
you were riotously entering into their fun and en¬ 
joying every sally of wit, when in reality you tried 
to be alone in your thoughts with one member of 
the company, and tried to have a tacit understand¬ 
ing that he and he alone was your real company? 
Did you try to steal furtive glances or look through 
his eyes into his very soul? If you know the sig¬ 
nificance of what I am asking, then you know what 
I experienced that evening. 

Before we parted the whole party decided to meet 
next day at a given place, to listen to music and wit¬ 
ness a parade. The next morning we met as we had 
planned; but what surprised me was an addition of 
a pretty young woman whom my student friend had 
brought—I felt—on purpose to tantalize me and to 
convince me that I was not the only luminary in his 
sky of feminine possibilities. It provoked me, and 
even made me jealous—but why, with a suppliant at 
my feet—I persuaded myself that I did not care; but 
somehow I did care. After all, pride may be a good 
stimulant, but it is poor food for a hungry soul. 

The climax of the whole unfortunate trip was 
capped after we had all returned to our homes. Of 
course I expected my student friend to write to me, 
but I did not expect the message I received within a 
week. He sent me a letter in which he told me that 
our correspondence was ended, that only one arrow 
at a time could find lodgment in a woman’s heart. 
Cupid never shot two darts successively from the 
same bow; one was quite sufficient. That was his 
poetic way of expressing it, but the moment I re¬ 
ceived that letter I was mad at two men, the one 
who had taken me on this trip and laid his heart at 
my feet, and the one from whom I received this, 
my last letter, from that institution of learning. 


20 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


CHAPTER III. 

THE RENEWAL OF FRIENDSHIP 

“My valor is certainly going, it is sneaking off; I feel 
it going out, as it were, at the palms of my hands.” 

Fate, fancy and the future can make shipwreck 
of the strongest masculine bark that sails life’s 
ocean, or bring that bark to port fraught with the 
richest merchandise gathered in the marts of ex¬ 
perience. It very largely depends on the type of 
femininity that stands at the helm or paces on the 
watch as his ship sails life’s ocean. I, Mary Jane, 
believed this to be true, even in the earlier period of 
my observation of man’s frailty and susceptibility to 
woman. 

Because I knew all this to be true of the genus 
man who is called or who selects the ministry as his 
life-vocation, I tried to flatter myself that I had 
escaped the burden of a grave responsibility in 
losing my correspondent, for I reasoned that it 
might easily have terminated in my becoming a pas¬ 
tor’s wife. And what if I should have proven the 
cause for his failure in his responsible calling? 

As the months went by and I heard no more from 
my correspondent, all my philosophy came to 
naught, because I certainly did miss the white¬ 
winged messengers that for a time had come so reg¬ 
ularly, and which even then I appreciated more than 
my foolish heart would admit. 

Just about the time that I became convinced that 
the chapter of my little romance had closed with 
what was now a man in the active ministry (For 
some reason he had not even sent me an invitation 
to the graduation exercises which I knew had taken 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


21 


place months before), hope revived. Providence, or 
call it fate if you like, dipped its pen afresh, ready 
poised to continue the narrative. It so happened, or, 
I repeat, it was prearranged by Providence, that the 
ecclesiastical assembly to which my 1 student friend 
belonged was booked to meet in our church. The 
pastor, in thinking of homes available to entertain 
the ministers, recalled that I had entertained the 
student, who was now a pastor in a country church 
less than a hundred miles away, when, about a year 
ago, he had preached for us; so he asked my father 
whether he could send him to our home. 

I heard my father tell mother of the pastor's re¬ 
quest, and I felt my heart leap and my cheeks burn, 
but I pretended not to have heard or to be in the 
slightest degree interested. As I was about to leave 
the room, my father said “Mary, what do you think? 
Shall I tell him to send him to us ?” 

I replied: “I am not quite sure that I wish him 
to come to us.” I knew when I said it that my 
father was slyly winking his eye at mother; but I 
pretended not to see or care. 

“I will tell you tomorrow,” I said as I hastily 
left the room. 

Once securely locked in my rooih, I went over the 
situation carefully. I asked myself whether the 
pastor really had been assured that my student 
friend (I again used the possessive “my” as I 
thought of him) was willing to be assigned to us 
as our guest, suppose we refused to entertain him or 
he should refuse to come? 

One thing was certain, he would come to the meet¬ 
ing and he would be entertained somewhere. If he 
did not come to us, the tongues of the gossips would 
be doing double duty. Every girl in town, every 
woman that knew me, at least so I fancied, would 
join the gossipers when so favorable an opportunity 


22 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


came, as this. They would even make bold to ask 
me why he was not entertained in our home. 

There was still another reason, I was compelled 
to admit, why I must entertain him, and that rea¬ 
son may have already occurred to you, kind reader— 
I felt I wished very much to have him come to us. 

Having fully settled in my own mind that we 
would entertain my student, I at once began to dream 
— I pictured myself going to the service in the 
evening and afternoons. Of course I thought of 
how I would dress. More than a month before the 
seminary commencement, when I still expected to 
attend it (would you believe it), I actually had some 
special dresses for the occasion; but the day for 
graduation came, and I had a sick headache. Of 
course the headache might not have come, had I 
received an invitation to the commencement. 

That very evening my farmer lover called; but I 
was in bed. I heard him ring the bell. I knew his 
ring—sort of a long-drawn, pull-me-hard ring; and I 
felt, oh, so much like emptying the water in the 
wash-bowl in which my mother had soaked cloths 
and put them on my head as fast as they dried, on 
that man's head. He and his were good customers 
in my father's store, and I think that fact alone 
saved him. Now, I argued, I could wear that very 
dress. You think I am, or was, a very silly woman, 
but 

“What will not woman, gentle woman dare, 

When strong affection stirs her spirit up?” 

I am quite sure now that it was affection, strong 
affection that made me imagine and plan till my 
mind was all in a whirl. 

He was to be at our house a w-h-o-l-e week. Aside 
from the advantage that would give me over all the 
other girls in the parish—to be in his company and 
to have all the girls see me come with him to church 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


23 


whenever I cared to come, and spend the delicious 
autumn evenings on the veranda, when it was so 
cool, that it would not be considered bold or too 
familiar to sit close—there were some other contin¬ 
gencies not so pleasant to contemplate. For in¬ 
stance—suppose he would n-e-v-e-r come to our 
home, after the sessions of synod were over—how 
the girls would titter and wink each Sabbath I came 
to church. What unpleasant moments that would 
cause me. Again I asked myself, Did my pastor 
really know he was willing to come, and perhaps 
asked to be entertained at our house? I must con¬ 
fess, I asked myself so many questions and sur¬ 
rounded the whole situation with so many subjunc¬ 
tives that the whole matter was as forbidding as a 
skating pond filled with barbed wire. It seemed to 
me that anywhere I would venture to turn I was 
sure to trip into something hard and unpleasant. 

Whilst all these thoughts were in my soul day and 
night, one of the Kauffman girls (the Kauffman 
girls were our neighbors. They were three sisters 
who, it always seemed to me, took turns in watching 
my window on Saturday and Thursday evenings, 
when my callers usually came to see or take me 
out, and for that reason they and I were never inti¬ 
mate friends, although we professed to be on the 
best of terms), told me that the pastor had been to 
see them, and asked them to entertain a distin¬ 
guished missionary; he had been in India many 
years and done much good. She said the old man 
was home on furlough, and was trying to get some 
young men and women to form a colony among the 
heathen and so, by their Christian example, convert 
them. She just begged her mother to refuse to en¬ 
tertain him, for fear he might induce her to become 
a missionary, and then perhaps have her liver eaten 
by a cannibal. It was too horrid to think about. 


24 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

I went home and told my mother about the mis¬ 
sionary and what the Kauffman girl had said; but 
my mother said to be near the Kauffman girls for 
one day would cool the ardor of any missionary and 
cause him to abandon his field rather than have it 
tied up with one of those girls. You see mother did 
not like them better than I did. 

Anyhow, I felt glad that the pastor hadn’t asked 
us to entertain the missionary. I had heard there 
was a great magnetism about those missionaries, 
which perhaps accounted for the fact that most of 
them were never eaten—not even their livers—by 
the cannibals, and for the fact that they could in¬ 
duce anyone to go with them to those Foreign Lands. 
In those days I had not yet learned the blessedness 
of their unselfish service for humanity. I had not 
learned that they, above all ministers, deserved the 
best entertainment when they were home on fur¬ 
lough; but I was young in the Christian life and 
believed that the missionaries had to eat out of a 
calabash with their fingers, whilst cannibals had 
their eyes glued on them, ready to swallow them 
even before they were half roasted over a roaring 
fire. 

Like every event in my life, whether dreaded or 
longed for, the time for the meeting of Synod drew 
near, and everybody looked for the list of delegates 
in the town paper. We had been told that we would 
receive notice of whom we were to entertain, and 
that it was not at all likely that any change would 
be made in the assignment; but that “at all likely” 
went like an arrow into my soul. So perhaps in the 
end I would see him and one of the Kauffmans in 
the pew evening after evening. I determined I could 
and would do nothing. 

At last the list of delegates was published, and 
my father’s name, beginning with the first letter of 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 25 

the alphabet, stood at the head of the list and with 
it the fact that the youngest and only single min¬ 
ister of the Synod would be our guest. I at once 
went to the front door to see if I could get a sight 
of any of the Kauffmans; but the blinds were tightly 
drawn and the house as quiet as if someone had 
died, and it wasn't fly-time either. 

I had a jumping toothache that morning, when 
the list of delegates was published; but it almost 
immediately left me and I never afterward had an 
ache in that tooth. The state of the mind does affect 
the body. Synod was to meet the next week, and 
much remained to be done. And it was done, I as¬ 
sure you. 

The morning following the publication of the 
names of those who were expected to attend Synod 
I went to church as usual; but when the pastor said 
that although the list of delegates had been pub¬ 
lished, he would read them with slight changes, I 
felt a cold chill creep up my spine. The names were 
read and my father's name and the assignment 
made us, headed the list. I felt that the matter was 
settled. The youngest and only single minister in 
Synod would be our guest. 

I suppose, kind reader, that my being so eager 
to entertain and so anxious how I would entertain 
this man, was all very foolish on my part; but, do 
you know, a woman never likes to be set aside, not 
to say scorned, or even rebuked. I had been rebuked 
and I had been set aside by this young clergyman, 
simply because someone else was in love with me, 
and I did not at once reject him. I congratulated 
myself that I might possibly get even now. Sweet 
is revenge—especially to women. 

I fancied that if I ever would love this man, I 
would before falling into his arms like an over-ripe 
fruit from a tree, first settle that old score when he 


26 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

refused to write to me after asking me to write, and 
I sacrficing my maidenly reserve, by readily enter¬ 
ing into a correspondence with him, I would, so help 
me Venus! lead him, if I could, to the very marriage 
altar, and then and there I would do something— 
just what, I had not in my wildest fancy, deter¬ 
mined. It never occurred to me that he could play 
the same game. My reason should have told me 
that he was past master at the game. In all proba¬ 
bility some demure prayer-meeting damsel had him 
well in her toils by this time, and I might be com¬ 
pelled to play a losing game from first to last. 

Just how far I carried my revenge, and how 
much I cared to get even remains to be told. Of 
one thing be assured, young lady, when a virtuous 
young man comes to you in confidence, respect that 
confidence. If you do not you will never find hap¬ 
piness, the twin sister of love. Without confidence 
virtue vanishes from the heart and love will never 
be born. 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


27 


CHAPTER IV. 

SYNOD OPENS 

‘‘Take life too seriously and what is it worth? 

If the morning wake us to no new joys. 

If the evening bring us not the hope of new pleasures, 

Is it worth while to dress and undress? 

Does the sun shine on me today that I may reflect on 
yesterday ? 

That I may endeavor to foresee and to control what 

Can neither be forseen nor controlled—the destiny of 
tomorrow ? ” 

The day for the opening of Synod came, and it 
brought the only unmarried member to our house. 
I had spent some time that afternoon on my hair. 
I once read that: 

“Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare 
And beauty draws us with a single hair.” 

Somehow these) lines from Pope were recalled 
again and again as I arranged, curled or combed. It 
would have been better if I had paid more attention 
to Paul's exhortation about “Braided hair and 
costly array.” (First Timothy, 2:9.) 

Mine is contrary hair, because after it has been 
put up in tins (I don't mean that I tinned my hair 
in the sense the English tin their fruit. We had a 
married woman who did not tin her hair, nor can 
it either, but served it fresh with almost every pie 
she baked and every dish she prepared.) it persisted 
to come out of the net in ringlets on my forehead. 
I determined that there should be no hair coming 
down on my forehead in this, my real meeting with 
the man with whom my correspondence had been so 
abruptly broken up. I know intellectual people have 


28 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

high foreheads. I had a notion not to have curls or 
even wear a net. In those days hair nets were fash¬ 
ionable. I had made up my mind to comb my hair 
back straight and part it in the middle; but when I 
saw myself in the glass—0 my! one glance was 
enough. 

I am telling you my experiences and aspirations 
of those days in order that you may know how ex¬ 
tremely ignorant of the great verities of life, and 
how very silly I was. I did not belong to the nat¬ 
urally pious whom Providence seems to have created 
for ministers’ and missionaries’ wives, any more 
than I was of that ethereal class who, because of 
their extreme goodness, die young. 

That evening, when he arrived, I wore a white 
muslin dress with a belt, and with hearts in red 
embroidered on the sleeves. The dress came to my 
shoe tops and mother said it was scandalously short. 
In those days, when a girl entered the top of her 
teens, she became a young lady and lengthened her 
dress accordingly. It is different now; they keep 
shortening their dresses for the same reason mer¬ 
chants put garments in the show cases. We dressed 
decently in those days and never advertised our 
charms. 

At last the hour for the arrival of the train came, 
and my brother met him at the train. I met him in 
the parlor, as we called the living-room in those 
days; and shook hands cordially, not with three fin¬ 
gers, mincingly. I think we felt in that hand-shake 
that we were real nice friends. I know I did. We 
knew we had met before and said nothing about 
our experiences in previous meetings. We both felt 
that it was best that way. 

There is a subconsciousness in such meetings, 
shared alike by two young people, more subtle but 
just as convincing as if we had spent hours “in talk- 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MARY JANE 


29 


ing it over.” The eyes and hands convey under¬ 
standings more eloquently than words. Somehow 
the most unsophisticated can read them intuitively. 
I was happy in his company that night, and if he 
was not in mine, he could dissemble better than any 
child of the world I ever knew. 

The next morning he was off to the Prayer Meet¬ 
ing which was held each day before the beginning 
of the business session. Of course in our day these 
Prayer Meeting^ ar^ very poorly attended, and 
for this reason have been largely replaced by ser- 
monettes or brief exegeses of some doctrine, or some 
book of the Bible. The great lights of the Synod 
are too busy to attend these early meetings, or per¬ 
haps they do not need them; and the lesser lumi¬ 
naries realize that to attend them is not necessary 
to achieve either usefulness or greatness! in the 
Church of today. 

My guest was a busy man that entire week—busy 
in the sessions of the Synod, but I believe busier in 
the sacred chambers of his own soul. The reason I 
believed he was holding secret sessions in his own 
soul was from what happened at the end of the 
week. By that time his judgment had so far run 
away with his reason that I intuitively felt I must 
prepare for a crisis. We had planned to take a 
walk on one of the less frequented streets of the 
town that evening, after the last session of the 
Synod. A walk in the clear autumn evening after 
sitting long in the church and listening to disserta¬ 
tions which to me were not interesting, was far bet¬ 
ter than to go home and sit in a stuffy room with 
my irreverent brothers trying to monopolize the 
conversation. I felt, too, that in such a walk we 
would be away from the scrutinizing gaze of my 
neighbors across the street. It seemed to me that 
whenever we appeared outside of the house, or in 


30 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

church, I could see the gimlet-like eyes of at least 
one of the Kauffman girls trying to bore into the 
secrets of our very souls. Sometimes I caught them 
looking impertinently into our windows as my stu¬ 
dent friend and I sat in the dimly lighted room. Of 
course not one of them came to our house all that 
week, or gave me the slightest glance of recogni¬ 
tion, even though they brushed against us on the 
street and in church. I think they were jealous of 
me, and the thought made me happy. Do not call 
me wicked, all girls are that way. 

But to return to the walk we had planned for 
that evening—'what puzzled me, from the time he 
had proposed that walk until we were actually about 
to leave the church after the benediction, was why 
he was going to settle our destiny so far as two 
souls can agree to settle their destiny, on a public 
thoroughfare. I wondered whether I was to receive 
the second proposal in the open town as I had re¬ 
ceived the one of which you, my reader, already 
know, in the open country. That evening I recalled 
that other proposal. I remembered distinctly that 
a little bird, a pee-wee, was shrilling his abbreviated 
chirp to his mate in an adjacent field, but it sounded 
as if saying his usual “pee-wee” he actually said 
“gee-whiz” when my lover asserted that he “knew 
me.” I felt sure that there would be no pee-wee to 
mock us that evening. 

The street on which we were about to take our 
walk is overshadowed in hot summer days by two 
rows of horse chestnuts. On a moonlight evening, 
little silvery patches of light steal among the 
shadows om the pavement which look like down 
dropped from angel wings. (I really do not believe 
that ordinary angels, angels of the rank and file, 
have wings, do you? We will not speak lightly of 
Heaven and its Holy inhabitants, but reverently, and 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


31 


in the fear of God, in fact we won't speak of angels 
at all; for we know so little about them.) 

The service that evening) seemed interminable, 
but at length it was concluded. The walk? Noth¬ 
ing came of it. We did not take it. The sexton 
slipped up to him and handed him a telegram. It 
summoned him to the funeral of one of his most 
prominent members. It was to take place the next 
afternoon and he must make the train in half an 
hour, which gave him scant time to pack his satchel. 

I was compelled to take down all the staging of 
what I had pictured in my imagination would be 
enacted that evening. Was I mad? Not exactly. 
I had that “gone feeling" which always comes when 
our hopes are suddenly unrealized. I went to bed 
and actually sobbed. Mother came to the door and 
said, “Are you sick, Mary?" I said, "No, Mother, 
only tried." If a crying baby had been in bed with 
me that night I would not have slept less. 


32 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


CHAPTER V. 

THE VISIT AFTER SYNOD 

“Our chief want in life, is, somebody who shall make us 
do what we can. This is the service of a friend. With him 
we are easily great. There is a sublime attraction in him to 
whatever virtue is in us. How he flings wide the doors of 
existence! What questions we ask of him! What an under¬ 
standing we have! How few words are needed! It is the only 
real society.” !j , 

Though it seemed an age to me in reality not 
many days went by after our hurried parting, the 
evening Synod ended, before I received a letter from 
our guest, thanking us for our hospitality, and ask¬ 
ing that he might be permitted to finish what he said 
was an incomplete visit to our home. He said that 
he had been so extremely busy during the sessions of 
Synod that he and I had had no time to get acquaint¬ 
ed. If agreeable, he would come the very next 
Monday. Monday among ministers is considered a 
Holiday. It is the day upon which they throw off 
the nerve strain of the previous Sabbath with all its 
services and perplexing duties. 

Of course, it would have been a breach of hospi¬ 
tality if I or Mother would have refused to enter¬ 
tain our erstwhile guest for a day. It would have 
seemed a reluctance on our part to be friendly. I 
consequently answered this letter the same day I 
received it, saying we would be pleased to have him 
call on us on the day he stated in his note. I tried 
to be formal and couch my note in as few words as 
possible, but somehow the attempt to continue our 
friendship with this young minister was as I have 
told you, very much desired by me. When he came 
my brother met him at the station, and in a few mo- 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


33 


ments he was at the door of my home. In spite of 
my effort to be matter-of-fact in my greeting, I 
felt a blush mount my cheeks as he pressed my hand. 
He seemed to look straight through my eyes into my 
consciousness and I knew he read my feelings and 
knew just how much I hoped during the days I had 
heard nothing from him, that he would come to see 
us. Thus it was that although I had determined to 
meet his gaze unflinchingly, my eyes fell beneath 
his pitilessly searching look. I was disgusted with 
myself. What had I done or thought to thus dis¬ 
concert me ? 

After dinner we had a delightful stroll and chat¬ 
ted of the events and persons that had interested us 
the week before during the meeting of Synod. We 
avoided the street shaded with horse chestnuts, 
probably because it was no longer moonlight. 

When we came back from our walk, Mother and 
some of her friends were chatting in the living- 
room, and he being the only gentleman in the room, 
must necessarily interest every one in the general 
conversation, or confine his attention to me in a 
tete, which would have been very embarrassing if 
not ludicious to all concerned. He rose to the occa¬ 
sion. His interest in any subject—the weather, the 
churches of the town, the Lyceum Course of enter¬ 
tainment and the entertainers, the coming Presi¬ 
dential election and the different candidates, the 
sewing circle, were all subjects on which he seem¬ 
ed to be pretty well informed. 

That evening simply deepened the impression I 
had received during his stay in our home the pre¬ 
vious week. There was a sobriety in his demeanor, 
an acquaintance with men and events, a breadth of 
information which not one of the young men who 
called in our home could match. I got a new vision 
of things, a new insight into his character. 


84 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

My Mother’s callers soon took their departure, 
and she excused herself. Within ten minutes after 
we were alone, he courted me with an ardor that 
was as keen as that of the most love-sick swain, I 
had ever met or read about. He did not say he wish¬ 
ed to marry me; he did not even say that he loved 
me; he acted it and he did not ask me to write to 
him every week. He insisted I must. He said he 
missed my letters all through the summer and asked 
me whether I did. I asked him what he would give 
to know. 

The very next morning he left the town with the 
first train, and left behind him in my mind and the 
mind of every member of my family, the impres¬ 
sion that after all a conscientious Christian Minis¬ 
ter had many duties for the days of the week other 
than Sunday, and that preaching the gospel is a 
man’s job. Our correspondence continued from 
week to week, but his brief stay as well as his cor¬ 
respondence combined to give me a new vision of 
life and its duties. He had not preached at me or to 
me directly, except as all he said contained a ser¬ 
mon. I felt I had never risen to life’s real call to 
service and usefulness before now. As I heard the 
call and felt the thrill of a new incentive, I made up 
my mind to think differently about life and life’s 
duties from what I had done a year— a month 
before. 

I made up my mind that I would pursue a different 
line of reading. I had confined my reading to fiction 
and to magazines which detailed the latest fash¬ 
ions, and made me lose interest in anything I had to 
wear. I now determined to read biography and 
history. I was going to take up the study of popular 
science of which I had received a mere smattering 
during my school life. He was to learn from my cor¬ 
respondence that I no longer was the foolish little 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


35 


gossip, the social butterfly which he had known 
during the days of our first correspondence. 

Did I love him? I tried to persuade myself that 
whilst I did admire him for his evident good sense, 
his breath of information and his consecration, I 
would get along in life without him. I yould not 
break my heart over any man, so I said to Mary 
Jane, but in my subconscious self I knew I was hope¬ 
lessly in love and would be eternally unhappy if he 
would not ask me to be his wife. So we started to 
enact the second scene in our life drama, or tragedy, 
should I say ? Each week I received one or more let¬ 
ters, each letter required more paper to tell me his 
experiences in his parish work, his triumphs and his 
humiliations. Of course we uttered the same old 
words and sentiments that are characteristic of 
young people who are not betrothed, but sincerely 
wish they were. Love is blind and lovers cannot see 
the petty follies that they themselves commit and 
which in years to come provoke a smile as the letters 
that have been long treasured are re-read. Old love 
letters are forever to lovers more than bits of paper. 
They are like the fossil leaves; for those who find 
them after the writers are dead—they tell of beau¬ 
tiful things and days out of which life has forever 
gone. 

What puzzled me was the fact that he hardly ever 
referred to the young ladies of his parish. General¬ 
ly they, rather than the young men, predominate in 
such work. The young pastor free from matrimon¬ 
ial entanglements has a royal good time with the 
young women of the parish, and in fact of the 
neighborhood in which his lot is cast. The young 
women plan outings and picnics in summer, enter¬ 
tainments, afternoon teas, and skating and sleighing 
parties in winter, card parties and dances. The 
latter the young pastor, unless he is a High Church 
Episcopalian, will not frequent. 


36 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

His audience at every service will increase and 
even the prayer meeting will have new recruits from 
among the more devout not to say cunning virgins. 
Preachers, like other men, have a perfect right to 
weigh in the secret recesses of their own thoughts, 
the different characters with whom they become 
associated; but alas, preachers like other men show 
little wisdom in falling in love. The impulses of their 
masculinity lead them just as far from making pro¬ 
per selections for a life partner as does a plow man. 

When finally they do make a selection and confine 
their attentions stealthily, it may be, to the home 
nest of this, the songster of their choice and do not 
speedily repent of their choice because they have 
discovered what they supposed the sweetest song¬ 
bird, really to be common crow. The fact that he is 
snared becomes known to all too soon by all the 
girls of his set and his popularity dwindles accord¬ 
ingly. The girls once so pious suddenly find that they 
must attend to their own church or none at all. 
Many of his own flock who had been smitten by his 
charms now recognize him to be common clay. 
Soon after the wedding bells have rung and the cur¬ 
tain drops, that pastor's popularity is ended and he 
hails with delight the call to a new field to which he 
comes a married man, no longer the prey to besieg¬ 
ing femininity. I knew all this, although I had never 
entered the wild chase after new-fledged parsons, 
largely because few unmarried were called to the dif¬ 
ferent pulpits in my home town, but I could not help 
asking myself was it because I was blinded to his 
faults by the scintillations of his wit and wisdom 
and glowing heart's affection that I did not see the 
erase in his nature which others who were not so 
blinded and were in constant association with him 
saw, or was it rather that fate, Providence I should 
say, held them aloof from them, however much their 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


37 


beckoning hands might clutch emptily after him? 
Was it not so intended? Then why should 1 
question ? 

We had only one single minister come to 
a church of our town. Dr. W. for some 
years was pastor of Trinity Church; but age had 
gotten him wisdom as well as a bald head and he be¬ 
came the prey of some thirty spinsters all past 
thirty. An attack of pneumonia relieved him from 
all the duties of his parish militant, and his career 
became a cherished memory with every one of that 
band of thirty. Each confided to the other that she 
knew just what his intentions were had he lived. 


38 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


CHAPTER VI. 

HONEYMOON 

As the dew to the blossom, the bud to the bee, 

As the scent to the rose, are those memories to me. 

Three months have passed since I took up my pen 
to write a chapter in this, my autobiography. They 
have been busy months filled with new experiences 
and scenes. I have been to Washington, D. C. I 
do not remember when I first wished to go to 
Washington. It is one of the cities concerning 
which we Americans have heard and hear a great 
deal. We read of receptions and embassies and balls 
and Congressmen and Cabinet Meetings and so 
many other things that it has always puzzled me to 
know how the President gets time to do any real of¬ 
fice work. He seems to have so many other things 
to do. 

Of course I had seen pictures of the Capital, of the 
Congressional Library, the War and Navy Buildings 
and the White House and all other more important 
edifices of our great Capitol. I have seen pictures of 
the President and almost every Congressman, but all 
these pictures are no comparision to the real thing. 
Now I have really been to Washington and seen with 
my own eyes, its hotels, its parks, its monuments, 
and its famous “places.” We spent a whole week in 
the city. 

But who do you think was my chaperon? Why 
my husband, of course. I have so much to tell you 
of my experiences in the last few months that I 
can’t find time to tell you how and where and by 
whom we were married. How he proposed to me to 
become his wife. I have not time to tell you how I 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


39 


was dressed and who all attended the wedding and 
wished me a long and happy life. Just think of all 
that has happened in the last two months and you 
will know why a young bride and above all a 
young clergyman does not care to go into much de¬ 
tail. Besides what is the use of describing wedding 
dresses, attendants, and who played the wedding 
march and everthing else upon which people spend 
their time in writing up an account of a wedding; 
simply because they have no real new things to tell. 

If you had known me, dear reader, two years be¬ 
fore my marriage you would not have imagined that 
any lover who had made, whether divinely called or 
not, the ministry his life work would have proposed 
to me. But during the month of his wooing I trust, 
I caught a vision of a life of real purpose. If living 
and praying and exhorting men and women to con¬ 
secrate their lives to the service of the Divine Christ 
is not a real purpose in life, then what is it? After 
all is not everything worth while in life the result of 
the fact that we are made in the image of God and 
that Jesus has taught us how to regain that image 
now blurred ? To marry a preacher is no greater re¬ 
nunciation than to face life's duties with any other 
man. 

We started on our wedding trip the day after our 
marriage, and as I have already told you, we spent a 
whole week in one hotel. We were served with the 
most dainty meals I had ever eaten and with desserts 
of which I had never heard, much less knew how 
they were made. The colored waiters were dressed 
much more stylishly thanj my preacher husband 
who feed them almost every meal for some imagin¬ 
ed special attention. I always wore my best dresses 
to the dining room, because all the other guests look¬ 
ed me over from hair ribbon to slippers. 

I concluded that they somehow knew we were just 


40 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

married. “Just married” is what my girl friends 
had pasted on both the linen dusters we wore and on 
our suit cases. After we had been at the hotel sev¬ 
eral days, my husband came into the room as I was 
carefully inspecting my dresses, “traveling” and all. 

He said, “Hope you found no bugs! These clothes 
closets at hotels, I should have told you, must be 
used with extreme caution.” 

“I am not hunting for bugs, I am hunting for 
“just married” and what do you think? I found one 
pasted on the back of the dress I wore for the first 
time, today, to dinner.” 

“That explains why the waiters smiled so mis¬ 
chievously. Here it is! I said, and displayed the 
strip of paper upon which was printed in letters an 
inch long “ Just Married.” 

He said, “There ought to be a law against a 
thing like that.” 

I admit there ought to be, but what good would 
such a law be with no adequate penalty, and who 
would enforce it? 

At the end of the week we went to the town in 
which one of my husband’s churches is located and 
we were immediately “received” by the congrega¬ 
tion. Since then we have been “received” several 
times. These receptions are given by the congrega¬ 
tions and friends of members of the congregations. 
The members “receive” us by treating themselves 
to cake and ice cream. Of course, they give us some. 
There is no frivolity, no speech making at these re¬ 
ceptions. The women sit by themselves and talk 
about the weather, spring house cleaning, their gar¬ 
dens and their neighbors. The men, a little more 
dignified, do much the same. They seem a very busy 
people. I wonder how I’ll “measure up.” They 
themselves, seem to wonder as much as I do. They 
certainly watch me, in fact they inspect me. They 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


41 


seem to know everthing I have on, how my shoes are 
tied and whether the laces are round or flat, wheth¬ 
er I have filling in my teeth and its kind. One wo¬ 
man told my husband I looked like a “snow-peepy.” 
He explained to me that she meant to say that I did 
not look very strong. 

I have met all the single women of both congrega¬ 
tions, they seem so glad to see me—that I have come 
among them,—they seem relieved because they no 
longer need watch each other so that one of their 
number does not take advantage of the rest by show¬ 
ing undue attention to my husband. Before we were 
married that was their chief anxiety. My best 
girl friend pointed out the stout red cheeked damsel 
who said she could have married my husband, of 
course bofore I did, if she had cared to do so, but she 
did not care for him nor his office. I am trying to 
owe no one anything, but to love, but my fingers 
certainly do itch to scratch that red faced girl. 

I told my husband about her, and he only smiled, 
he didn’t blush or seem embarresed in the least. 
He said he had not heard of it and of course knew 
nothing about it. That wonderfully relieved me. 

I have not told you the best yet,—a few weeks af¬ 
ter we were married, a distinguished man, once a 
member of Lincoln’s Cabinet, and the Minister to 
Russia bought and donated the large three story 
brick house on the main street of the town to be our 
parsonage, our home in short. He was born in that 
house. I must describe it to you. It has large rooms 
and once was a hotel. A member of the church 
told me that several murders were committed in the 
house. She also told me of the death of the landlord 
in front of the open fire-place of what will be onr 
living room, and some other equally interesting 
tales. The great front room on the second floor, 
which in the days when this, now sombre and state- 


42 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

ly house “sowed its wild oats”, was the ball room, is 
to be our parlor. It is to be furnished by the con¬ 
gregation, and a picture of the donor of the house to 
the church is to be conspicuously placed in that 
room. 

I know I shall enjoy living in this historic and 
distinguished house. My husband will spend much 
of his time in the town fiv6 miles away where the 
congregation is located. I will, consequently, be a- 
lone with plenty of time for picturing the scenes 
that were once enacted in this house. My informant 
says that some of the rooms are haunted. I have a 
vivid imagination and a keen sense of hearing. I 
don't think it at all possible that a ghost can glide 
through any doorway from one room to another 
without making noise enough for me to hear him. 

Of course, if these ghostly visitors are too num¬ 
erous and their calls too frequent, I will go home to 
my Mother when my husband holds his protraceed 
services in the other church and does not come home 
at night. I asked him the other day whether he is 
afraid of ghosts and he replied that he, never having 
seen any, does not really know. He says he would 
not be afraid of Satan if he could see him as he real¬ 
ly is, but Satan always takes advantage of him by 
coming unexpectedly and disguised in sheep's cloth¬ 
ing. I do not know what he means by that; but 
then he has had more experience with his Satanic 
Majesty than I, because he went to the Theological 
Seminary for three years. 

We expect to move into the historic residence in 
less than a week. I am determined not to listen to 
the gossip about the ghosts and other disagreeabla 
things, anyhow. “Gossip is a sort of smoke that 
comes from the dirty tobacco pipes of those who 
diffuse it; it proves nothing but the bad taste of 
the smoker.” Do not envy me, but I know I shall be 
very happy in the historic house. 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


43 


CHAPTER VII. 

SECRETARIES 

“I am not now in fortune’s power. 

’Tis not mine to command, 

I dare not even take a stand, 

Widowed, I’d not even have a dower.” 

I have not the time nor the inclination to tell you 
of all the strange experiences that come to a pastor's 
wife in a historic house such as ours. These will be 
detailed in later chapters. There is one that deeply 
impressed me because it has given me a new angle 
of vision from which to view men and study char¬ 
acter. 

My husband, two weeks after we were established 
in the historic manse, received a letter from a church 
secretary, saying that he expected to visit us to 
present his cause to the congregations of which my 
husband is “the honored pastor.” I am not yet in a 
position to do elaborate entertaining, such as in 
keeping with the dignity and standing of a sec¬ 
retary whose business it is to tell the ministers how 
they must do their work, and encourage them to 
keep on the job by telling them of the grand oppor¬ 
tunities of the field and its blessed rewards. I 
shrank at the prospect of coming so soon into the 
lime-light with secretaries, because they know why 
some pastors fail in their work—“not the right 
kind of a help-mate”—and those godly men often 
base their opinion on the kind of beefsteak they 
eat in a parson's home. I plead for time to get 
ready, so that I could make a favorable impression, 
but my husband was inexorable—he is that way 
sometimes. 


44 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

I simply wish to add by way of introduction, that 
the secretary came promptly on time. I will say that 
my husband tried hard with me to get him a place of 
entertainment in a home of the congregation, but 
our women were very busy, and I being the pastor's 
wife, have a good easy time. Then too, the women, 
some of them, know how that particular secretary 
lives when at home. He lives in the finest house in 
the city. That is one reason the ladies of our 
church were so deaf to my importunities. I tried to 
make them understand that home-cooking is highly 
prized and enjoyed by so favored a personage. I told 
them that no doubt he would be willing to take ^‘pot- 
luck." That is what we invariably get when we 
make unexpected and uninvited calls. 

“Pot-luck" is a queer dish; mostly boiled cabbage 
and potatoes and pig-hocks; sometimes sour kraut 
and pork, which is not at all bad. At the restaurant 
where we took our dinner on our way home from 
our weddng trip, we had a “boiled dinner"; but it 
was really pot-luck under an assumed name. My 
husband ordered ‘‘chicken saute with rice", but what 
he really got was “pot-luck", same as* my New 
England dinner^ with perhaps less mixture. He 
said it was chicken gizzard, stale chicken liver and 
some other liver, he could not make out what liver 
and where and when it had been live liver. 

Of course you could not expect a secretary to eat 
such a mess, so I thought of an adequate bill of fare 
"pot-luck" and chicken saute were out of the ques¬ 
tion. When we were on our way home from our 
wedding trip we had seen the home and the office 
building where the secretary eats, sleeps and works, 
and I asked how the secretary could afford such ex¬ 
pensive quarters. My husband said, 

“He makes piles of money." 

“Who heaps the pile for him?" I asked. 

Hubby said, “I help." 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


45 


I have been thinking about “the piles of money” 
ever since hubby told me about them, and I am going 
to ask him to become a secretary. It would be so 
much nicer than being a country parson and taking 
collections for a living. 

I am really losing the thread of my story—the 
secretary’s visit. It was evening when he arrived, 
and after going through the historic manse, he de¬ 
clared himself well pleased, and said that he was ex¬ 
tremely fatigued, and if agrreable to me he would 
retire. Of course it was perfectly satisfactory to 
me, and my husband took him to the guest chamber, 
the room in which a hotel guest had been assassinat¬ 
ed years before; but that made no difference to the 
secretary, he being naturally a brave man, we did 
not tell him of the murder. 

When my husband came down stairs he said the 
secretary seemed a little exacting how he placed his 
pillows, and asked that a comfort be placed so as to 
keep the air from striking his head. 

In the morning he was late inf rising. When he 
came to the table he found a nice apple sauce as an 
‘"appetizer” the women of the parish call it. He 
seemed to study the dish for fully a minute, then he 
refused to taste it, saying he always eats grape 
fruit as a sort of an appetizer. At this season of 
the year, in our town, grape fruit is a luxury, and 
the secretary went without it. We had some radish¬ 
es from our own garden, but he said they ""are too 
rich in nitrogen” for him. He ate three eggs, but 
left the chop untouched. He enjoyed the eggs, be¬ 
cause he believed them to be strictly fresh. He 
said butchers ought to be prosecuted for misrepre¬ 
senting their meats, and said it after he had fixed a 
scrutinizing gaze on the chop to which my husband 
had helped him. 

When that breakfast was ended, I called my hub- 


46 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

by aside, and said in the most assuring tone I could 
command: 

“No more breakfast for his Reverence in this 
house. This noon you will take him to the hotel!” 

“That means $3.75 out of our pocket!” said my 
husband. 

“Can't you take it out of his ‘‘pile?” I said. 

“You poor unsophisticated kitten!” was all my 
husband deigned to reply. 

After the service in which the secretary made a 
moving address, (half of the people left before the 
perioration was finished and the collection was tak¬ 
en) Mrs. X came up to my husband and begged to 
be introduced to ‘‘the gentleman,” and incidentally 
invited him home for dinner. I was overjoyed. 

On Monday morning I made it my business to run 
over and see her. I asked how she liked her guest 
and whether he ate like a hungry man would natur¬ 
ally eat after such an eloquent effort. She said he 
ate sparingly of everything except pie, of which he 
seemed extraordinarily fond. 

Mrs. X does bake good pie. I like her pie myself. 
Even in our community pie is scarce, because so 
many pigs died of the cholera last autumn, and lard 
is scarce. We paid fifteen cents per slice at the 
County Fair, and they were teeny slices at that. I 
knew how the fact that the secretary liked pie 
wrung stingy Mrs. X's soul. 

The best is yet to be told about the secretary's 
visit. He and my husband went to the other con¬ 
gregation for the evening service and when hub 
came back the secretary was not with him. I was 
told in reply to my anxious question as to where 
he was, that he had gone home on the night train. 
I was comforted because I knew he would sleep on 
his “pneumatic hair mattress” after the wearying 
effort of the day. 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


47 


That evening we were wakeful and conversed 
long on the events of the day. I asked hub whether 
all secretaries are like that. He said they were all 
very much alike. I asked him how many secre¬ 
taries were officially necessitated to visit our coun¬ 
try charge. 

He said there are a straight dozen and that event¬ 
ually they would all have been to see us, to present 
their work and arouse enthusiasm. 

That night long after my husband was asleep, I 
lay awake asking myself why I ever, ever, allowed 
myself—Oh pshaw, what’s the use? 

There was one thing about that visit which made 
my foolish little scul glad. At noon when he made 
his apologies for not going home with me for dinner, 
he took both my hands in his and said, of course he 
would see me later, but then and once for all he 
wished me to know he had enjoyed his breakfast 
and everything, and wished me to come and meet 
his wife. 

This particular secretary will be nameless in 
these pages hereafter. Therefore I will tell you 
that about two weeks after his visit my husband 

said to me, “I must go to-tomorrow, and if you 

go with me we will meet the secretary and his wife. 
Perhaps he will invite us to take dinner with him.” 

I went with my husband and in due time we ar¬ 
rived in his offices. A real handsome young lady 
took our cards and disappeared into an adjoining 
room. In a moment the secretary himself appeared, 
and after greeting us, asked whether we had any 
particular business. He said he was extremely busy 
that morning, and must meet his Board that after¬ 
noon. Of course iwe begged his pardon for in¬ 
truding, to which he said, ‘‘It is perfectly all right 
that you called. Hope you will come again.” 

Before we left the office the secretary’s wife came 



48 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

into the room from an adjoining room, and he as a 
matter of course introduced us. She gave a very 
tiny little hand shake, sort of mincingly, but I could 
excuse her for that, because my husband would have 
crushed her diamonds into her proud flesh. My hus¬ 
band has a powerful grip if not on the hearts of 
secretaries, certainly on their hands. 

After we left the secretary's office we thought on 
the hard lot of secretaries with their Boards and 
their stenographers, and their many long trips to 
country congregations who cannot enter into their 
work with appreciation. Of course their wives can 
have a good easy time so far as church work is 
concerned. They do not have to study to please a 
body of fault-finding women, if they are so un¬ 
fortunate as some pastor's wives. Their duties are 
necessarily lighter than those of their husbands, so 
I thought, but to make sure I said. 

"Hub, what are the duties of secretaries' wives ?" 
He replied: 

"Oh, they have domestic duties such as other 
men's wives. Besides they have many social duties, 
but why do you ask?" 

I made no reply, but I did beat my knife on my 
plate so violently that the waiter came and asked 
to serve me. I told him to bring me a finger bowl; 
but he said there was a ladies' lavatory to the left 
as we pass out. 

That day I made up my mind that my husband 
must get some kind of secretaryship. Then I would 
be a secretary's wife and would have some of the 
social functions to which my husband alluded. The 
hope gave me a new and more rosy view for the 
future. Long years have passed since that day, and 
my husband is still a plain pastor, and I am glad that 
I am not a secretary's wife. You shall have my 
reasons why I am glad as you read the other pages 
of this biography. 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


49 


That very evening on our return home, we found 
a letter in the hall. I formed the habit early in our 
married life to read my own and my husband's mail 
before I hand it to him. I hate to endure the sus¬ 
pense of what the letters contain whilst he is silent¬ 
ly devouring their contents, and paying not the 
slightest attention to my questions: “From whom 
is it? What is in it? Why don't you read it aloud? 
Is it really intended for you? Has anything happen¬ 
ed ?" I therefore make it my duty to read for myself 
before my husband can get the letters. Husbands 
are so thoughtless that way. I am not like my 
husband. I read all the letters to him after I have 
first scanned them for myself. Then, too, my let¬ 
ters often contain items of interest I do not care 
for him to know. My first reading the mail is an 
admirable arrangement. It is so satisfying to both 
of us. 

As I have already said, there was a letter in the 
hall, and whilst my husband was withdrawing the 
key from the lock, I had opened it. It looked to be 
a very important letter. It was in an envelope about 
a foot long. Even in the act of opening it I saw 
that it was from the American Sunday School Union. 
It contained the joyful information that their rep¬ 
resentative would call in a few days, and if agree¬ 
able to my husband, he would preach for him on the 
Sabbath and canvass the congregation during the 
week, in the interests of the Union work. 

After I had read it I handed it to my husband. 
He said, “He represents a good cause, and we must 
do our best to help him." 

I think the reason my hubby fell so readily into 
the Union's plan was because the writer of the letter 
said, the Union had highly appreciated what my 
husband did whilst he was a student, and what his 
institution and church stood for. It all looked very 


50 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

good on paper and my husband saw not the “candied 
tongue” and realized not that it licked him to line 
for more honey, but not for him to taste. 

I too felt willing to do what I could, not only for 
the sake of the cause, but because this particular 
secretary was an old man and a member of our own 
denomination. My husband said; because he was 
an old man he had trouble in getting a charge. He 
said he was one of those secretaries whose salary 
depended on his own foraging. Foraging is not 
the word he used, but that is what he meant. 

That evening we sat up late going over the sucker 
list, (“sucker list” is also a word of my own coining 
in describing the good souls who were willing to 
entertain strangers in the hope that they might 
meet an angel once in a while). We went over the 
list in order to determine whom we would ask to 
entertain him for a week. We took up each pos¬ 
sibility in order, but we knew in advance what ex¬ 
cuse each one would give. We had only a few weeks 
ago placed a dozen delegates to an undenominational 
convention into our people's homes. My heart grew 
heavy and my feet felt like lead, before I had “plac¬ 
ed” them. I had been on the entertainment com¬ 
mittee. Now I must go and ask at least one of 
those same people to again open their hearts and 
homes to this stranger. I knew they would ask 
whether I intended to be out of town myself. I 
felt I had no excuse for refusing to entertain him 
myself, so without going to any one else I made up 
my mind to receive him into our own home. 

Strictly in accordance with the announcement in 
the letter, he came in two weeks. I invoiced him at 
the door. I found he was a slender, elongated sec¬ 
retary— not at all of the type as the one to 
whom I have already introduced you. He had mild 
blue eyes, and a fringe of grey hair in a straight line 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


61 


extending from ear to ear. This gave him an ex¬ 
ceeding high forehead and a look of superior brain 
power. 

On the morning of the first day after his arrival, 
my husband took him some warm water. We used 
the bowl and pitcher in that house and there were 
no “private baths” even in the village hotel. My 
husband had an amused expression when he came 
down stairs to me. I said; 

“What amuses you?” 

He said: “Nothing much. Only the old man's head 
looks like a squash on the white pillow.” 

He was a voracious eater. I had asked him in the 
evening, what he wished to eat for his breakfast. 
I was dreadfully afraid he would say that he was 
dieting, and name some unprocurable dainty, but 
not he. “Anything at all.” was his reply to my 
question. 

I took him at his word and made it, and took a 
sort of fiendish pleasure in making it. I prepared 
a dish of pudding and fried some sausage and mush 
and potatoes. There were apples and pears and pie 
and coffee. We had just received a donation, of 
which I'll tell you presently. 

The old man won my heart by praising my cook¬ 
ing. He said for one so young he had never met 
my equal in all his travels. He caught me even as 
the Union which sent him to us had caught my 
husband. I felt flattered. What young house-wife 
is not with such unstinted praise ? 

From the way he ate, I felt sure he was trying 
to eat his three meals for that day in one sitting. 
I felt sure he would be brought back in less than an 
hour, doubled up in a spring-wagon. I was agree¬ 
ably disappointed. He turned up promptly from his 
errand of mercy and tract distribution, at twelve 
poon. He took his nourishment with an avidity that 


52 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

was startling. Hub and I came to the conclusion 
that he had subsisted on turnips and artichokes 
eaten raw and out of doors; and that ours was the 
first civilized food he had eaten for weeks. 

Of course we did not seem to him to notice that 
there was anything unusual about his appetite. At 
the end of the week, when he left there was nothing 
to warm up, or any stale food of any kind, and the 
“bounteous donation” to which I have already al¬ 
luded, had all the letters knocked out except n-i-t. 
He expressed himself as having been a “good liver” 
whilst with us. He did not clean up his room nearly 
as tidily as he did his plate. He blackened his boots 
on my best spare-room chairs. He discarded all 
small ordinary towels and used my best ornamental, 
embroidered, which I had taken out of the “hope 
chest.” Burnt matches and cigar stubs were of 
course more evident when he left, than after the 
other secretary who had used the room only one 
night. For days the room had the odor of burnt 
flannel shirts. He smoked no Havanas. 

I do not know how long he might have remained 
had not Providence intervened. He received a 
telegram summoning him to the bedside of a very 
sick wife. 

After I had taken an invoice of what I 
had left in the pantry, and had spent a whole day 
cleaning up, I firmly resolved that my departure for 
home would be timed with the arrival of another sec¬ 
retary. My husband, you will remember, had said 
that there were twelve officially appointed secre¬ 
taries, and eventually they would all have been to 
see us; in addition there might be a score of unof¬ 
ficial ones, such as the one who had just deprated. 

I asked my pastor (I always call my husband my 
pastor when I speak to him in his official capacity, 
so that he may be duly conscious of the importance 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


53 


of what I say and not permit his heart to interfere 
with his judgment). “Of what use are secretaries 
anyway?” He replied: 

“Secretaries are the coal which adds fuel to the 
flame of the many other things that worry a pastor. 
They contrive to have him do the work according to 
their theories, and not as experience teaches the 
practical, praying pastor. But aside from the wor¬ 
ries and delays they cause in a new field, they en¬ 
courage the worker by their experience and are quite 
a help. Many of them whilst in the pastorate, never 
left a charge without its having become smaller and 
less efficient in its membership and work. They have 
learned by actual experience how difficult a pastor's 
work is, and are therefore capable of giving excellent 
advice. 

By their constant agitation they keep the im¬ 
portance of the work before the people and the con¬ 
tributions for the different branches of the Church’s 
work have been greatly increased since we have 
secretaries. Every work to be a success must have 
an executive head.” 

Surely this was all valuable information to me, but 
I had at least one more question that had much 
perplexed me; it was with regard to pecuniary com¬ 
pensation. If these secretaries are so much interest¬ 
ed in the work, why are they not willing to take 
salaries just as small as the pastors who raise “the 
budget,” and who by their self-denial and,) hard 
work, build up the small churches into efficient con¬ 
gregations. Why do they not ride in day coaches 
and even “sit up” some nights as do you and I when 
we travel. Why must they have solid mahogany or 
at least solid oak in their offices and studies? Why 
must their floors be covered with imported moquette 
or better ? 

After hesitating a moment he replied: “Oh well, 


54 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


these men somehow make others feel that they have 
superior executive ability and business capacity; 
and make the Boards who elect them think that they 
could get better salaries in the business world.” 

I asked: “Have they ever tried out their su¬ 
perior business capacity, so they can actually point 
to examples of their success?” 

His reply was, “Job 2:10.” 

Ever since we are married, whenever he wishes 
to humiliate me and does not have an argument to 
convince, he says, “Job 2:10,” and it makes me mad; 
but this time I felt encouraged because he had at 
all replied. Usually he walks away and says nothing, 
when I say anything he does not care to discuss or 
is unable to make a convincing reply. Silence does 
give an impression of superior wisdom; but suppose 
everybody would keep silent when questions, real 
important questions such as mine always are, are 
asked, what would the world find out? What prog¬ 
ress would it make? Anyhow, my sex does not be¬ 
lieve in keeping silence. If it did we would never 
have gotten the franchise. We have always be¬ 
lieved that we must fight if we would reign. 

I then fired my final shot. It was the charge I 
had been loading ever since the sleek, well groomed 
secretary had visited us, not the elongated, hungry 
one. I said. 

“Hub, why don't you give up this hard work that 
requires so much shoe leather, so much prayer and 
study? You are in the ministry as long as the sec¬ 
retary from-has been, and you know quite as 

much. If you become a secretary no one will let you 
walk. If you go on a business trip, those who wish 
to make a good impression on you will transform the 
hard business feature into a triumphal entrance in¬ 
to their town and churches. Why they fete and 
feast the secretaries! You will always ride in palace 



THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


55 


cars and not hunt for the cheapest on the menu in 
the diner. The Board will not even ask you for a 
strictly itemized account of your traveling expenses. 
If you write one strong sermon or two you will 
have enough for a whole year. The people will say, 
“Why did he ever leave the pastorate? He is so 
eloquent. Isn’t he grand? If we had a preacher 
like that!” 

I noticed a far-away look creep into my dear hus¬ 
band’s face. He looked sad it seemed to me. Then 
he looked at me and smiled as he said: ‘‘Job 2:10.” 

“Job 2:10” ruffled me. I never lose my temper 
except under extreme provocation. 

“Come not within the measure of my wrath.” I 
playfully said, but he could see beneath the ripple of 
my smile and looked serious. 

“Why do you forever quote Job? Why not some¬ 
body who was strong and well? What do you know 
about Job’s wife, anyhow? I double dare you to 
prove that she would not have taken the potsherd to 
“scrape him withal” even after his insinuating re¬ 
marks to her. Women are the same in all ages. 
Mankind in all ages have never appreciated women. 
Job was just like you. He would allow his wife to 
help him and then abused her with his sarcasm. 
Women are more patient than men. Especially is 
this true of the wives of saints. They learn pa¬ 
tience not from example, but by bitter practice.” 
Then I added: “Explain yourself.” 

Then he did talk real sense. He said: 

‘‘In the first place any man who loves to win 
souls and is successful in his work will not turn 
heaven and earth to get a name. He will be quite 
content to walk humbly before his Lord. In the 
next place I have no influence. You must have 
friends in the appointing board or committee.” 

I said: 

“But what gets you friends in the Boards?” 


56 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

He did not at once reply, but as I looked him 
straight into the eye, I saw what I had never dis¬ 
covered in him. He jerked out the word, “Pull.” in 
answer. 

“But you seem to be able to set on its feet the 
congregations some one else has knocked down!” 

“People are not called to be secretaries for that 
kind of work” he said, and left the room. 

We have not spoken on the subject of what really 
qualifies a man to become a secretary. I now con¬ 
fess to myself that I did not in those days have the 
right point of vision. I still believe you must be¬ 
long to a Church Board to get that. I have made 
the acquaintances of many secretaries as they come 
and go, and I have long since come to the conclusion 
that they too have their trials of which the ordinary 
mortal knows nothing. 

I have not told you of my new acquisition, Mag¬ 
gie, (Maggie Sutton is her name). One day not long 
ago there came to the manse this poor girl. She had 
all her possessions in a carpet sack. She looked very 
tired. She told me she had asked at half a dozen 
homes for a place to work, and half of them had 
spoken of me as a person who ought to have help. 

I told her to come in, told her to wash and then 
come to the kitchen for luncheon. The girl was 
certainly hungry. She ate as voraciously as the 
bald secretary; but after her repast she did what 
the secretary did not,—she washed her dishes and 
tidied the kitchen. Her manner and personal ap¬ 
pearance appealed to me and won my heart. When 
my pastor rang the bell he was surprised to see a 
stranger open the door. Without speaking a word 
to her he rushed up stairs to the study where I sat 
reading, and without kissing me (he always kisses 
me when he is happy and has been successful in his 
afternoon’s work. When he is worried or displeased 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 57 

—well he don’t, that’s all. He tells me afterwards 
when I chide him that he forgets). He said: “Mary 
Jane, who on earth is that girl down stairs ?” I said: 

“Your kind heavenly Father sent her to us, so that 
you no longer need eat burned toast and sodden 
slapjacks for your breakfast.” 

“And what agreement has she and our heavenly 
Father as to her pecuniary reward (my husband can 
use very dignified language when he is mad or 
preaches) for all her services? What do you know 
about her?” 

“Don’t be so miserly and so suspicious! It is a 
wonder that you did not examine my teeth, whether 
they are sound and well filled before you married 
me.” 

Then I put my arms about him and kissed him. 
He agrees to anything I ask him after I do that. 
Vinegar never catches flies. I said: “I told her 
we’d fix her wages in a few days.” 

“That’s all right, Honey. You keep her, and if 
you like her there’ll be a way.” 

We have had her three weeks now and she is 
just splendid. She has saved my life once; and a 
baby and its mother. Let me tell you. She and I 
went to the country for butter and eggs. On the 
way home to shorten our walk I suggested that we 
cross the aqueduct a mile above the mill. The boys 
had put a plank across. It was cracked but I told 
her it would bear our weight one at a time. She 
said: I’d rather walk a mile than be drowned five 
minutes.” 

“Oh, come on! Don’t be a coward, I’ll go first.” 

I did go first but not across. That plank broke in 
the middle. The water was cold and my heart stop¬ 
ped. It always does when I am scared. I choked 
too, because the nasty dirty water came into my 
throat when I tried to scream. That is the time my 
heart stopped. 


58 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

The next I knew was when the miller and Maggie 
were carrying me toward the mill. Maggie was just 
as wet as I was, but her heart did not stop or else 
we both would have drowned. The miller said, ‘‘Miss, 
this girl saved your life. ,> (of course he did not know 
me and that I was a married woman.) 

The Knocker’s Club, composed of the gossips of 
our village (some of the women of our church be¬ 
long to it) said some awful things about me. They 
said the miller rolled me on a barrel for ten minutes 
to get the water out of me and that he helped to 
take all my water soaked clothing off me, and that 
he after rubbing me wrapped me in blankets. 

I was perfectly conscious and besides, Maggie 
confirms the fact that after they had carried me 
to the mill the miller led the way to his office, got 
some towels and told Maggie as he went out, to take 
my wet clothes off, massage me and wrap me up in 
some grey blankets whilst he went for his delivery 
wagon to take us home. Maggie did all that and not 
the miller. 

I was in bed for a week at home and would have 
taken pneumonia if Maggie had not attended to me 
like a professional. When I was anxious that she 
should rest, she said: 

“Never mind me. I am used to hardship.” I wond¬ 
er to what she refers. I am going to make her tell 
me her story soon. When I did ask her a few days 
after she came, about her home, her folks, etc., she 
said: 

“Please don’t ask me!” and burst into tears. 

After I was well she went to spend the afternoon 
with some young people. Two young men of the 
village and a girl friend were bringing her home 
when they saw a neighbor woman rushing down the 
street toward her open door, screaming that a dog, 
frothing at the mouth had just pushed his way 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


59 


through the door, and that her baby, her baby, mind 
you, was inside asleep in its cradle. She was going 
to rush to the baby’s aid, but Maggie said, ‘Til go.” 

She pushed the mother aside, brought the baby 
out unharmed, and said the dog was lying seem¬ 
ingly dead, with his red jaws swollen and full of 
froth. 

The young men ran away, saying they would soon 
be back with help. When they returned with a 
gun and a pitch fork, Maggie had already been in 
the house a second time and killed the dog with an 
axe. 

She herself told me that Jack, one of the young 
men (He had been very kind to Maggie for months, 
taking her out riding and bringing her candy) asked 
her to marry him. She told him, “Nothing doing. 
You’d let the dog eat the baby. I’ll never trust 
another man.” 

I asked her after she had finished about Jack’s 
proposal, 

“What do you mean by ‘another man’?” 

She said, ‘‘Please do not ask me.” and went out 
of the room. 


60 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MARY JANE 


CHAPTER VIII 
GHOSTS 

“My people too were scared with erie noises, 

A footstep, a low throbbing in the walls, 

A noise of falling weights that never fell. 

Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand.” 

We have now been living in the historic house 
nearly a year and I have never told you some of our 
very first experiences. I never told you that I re¬ 
ceived many useful and pretty things from home. 
The reason I did not tell you about them is because 
all girls get pretty things from their loving mothers. 
Of course we bought some things at the “emporium” 
as the big furniture house is called. 

The big front room upstairs, which was the 
ball room when the manse was a hotel, was fur¬ 
nished by the congregation, and is the embodiment 
of the different tastes of the people. The room has 
green carpet on the floor. It has black hair cloth 
furniture. The frames of sofa and chairs are 
walnut. Some of our dear people brought red, and 
some blue and some brown cushions and pillows for 
the chairs and sofa. The curtains on the windows 
are snow white and the blinds are amber. 

The deacon who made the presentation speech, 
said: “Hither to this great room you will both come 
for repose and quiet. Everything in it speaks of 
peace; everything is so harmonious.” If you knew 
him you would know as I do, that he says what he 
means and means what he says. 

I made up my mind after I saw the last piece of 
furniture and the last pillow and cushion in place 
that whenever I come to “this great room for repose 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 61 

and quiet” I will first blindfold myself. One cannot 
have repose and real peace when glaring colors 
smite you. My eyes are weak anyway, and the gar¬ 
ish daylight of this room smites them like a great 
red light. 

There are two portraits on the wall which picture 
two faces that are the embodiment of refinement, 
intelligence and quiet dignity. I have however made 
it a habit now to open my eyes wide enough and long 
enough to study these faces. 

These two pictured faces are not the only faces 
in this village that impress me. Some of the mother- 
faces in the Congregation are so sweet and tender 
because they have seen so much that is sad and be¬ 
cause they have been driven close to God they ex¬ 
hale such fragrance of love that I long to take them 
between my palms and kiss their dear lips. If I 
were a painter and wished to paint a virgin Madon¬ 
na; I would paint that face as it must have 
looked a decade after the boy Christ came home 
from the first visit to the temple, when his parents 
sought him anxiously. Any mother when she holds 
her first babe to her heart, is beautiful; because it 
bears the kiss of the angel of life, and because she 
has so recently looked into the face of God as she re¬ 
ceived her child; and because she saw Him when the 
black curtain was closely drawn and death stood 
in the background watching the gates of life. 

When Christ was in his foster father's carpenter 
shop until the sun dipped into the Mediterranean be¬ 
hind the Nazareth environed home, his mother no 
doubt often stole into the place to caress her Son. 
There when the day's toil was ended, and he had 
his manly arms about her and they two looked 
through the gathering shadows of the dreadful night 
which they both knew would soon envelope them, 
out toward the dawn of the resurrection morn 


62 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


to the glad day of the ascended life they are now 
both living, they must have presented a picture such 
as the guardian angels adored. 

Why has not artist ever attempted that picture? 
If I were an artist and in search of a model to paint 
such a picture I feel I would not have far to go. I 
could find a number of them right in this village. 
Their deep mother-love, womanly grace and tender¬ 
ness withal, are found here in this village, and they 
grace these quaint old homes whose shady nooks 
with their gates leading off into green fields, remind 
one of Eden. 

If my heart ever threatens to break under the 
burden of any earthly woe, next to God, IT1 go to 
any one of the several mothers I know in this vil¬ 
lage. I know the dear Christ often looks at them 
when He says, “Whom shall I send ?” on some special 
errand of mercy and love. From what I know of 
them, I know He is never disappointed at their 
answer. 

But I have not told you all about the donations 
these people give. It is beyond my possibility to 
give you a full list of the good things to eat those 
people brought us the day we moved into the his¬ 
toric house. There were pies and cakes, layers and 
standing, round and square cakes, potatoes sweet 
and Irish, apples and pears, cherries tinned and 
dried, preserves of every fruit—but really, for the 
sake of my sisters in the city I must desist from ex¬ 
panding the list. Unless they come here they will 
never know the arts of a Lancaster County house¬ 
wife. If they do, they will after recovering from 
their dyspepsia, ever afterward feed the imagina¬ 
tion by day and dreams by night. 

Someone has said “Man was made to worship/' 
but I believe he was made to eat—first the apple 
and then in due course all the other courses. The 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


63 


more civilized the more depraved the avenues of 
his gastronomies, along which the enemy assails 
him and steeps him in the brine of sour stomachs 
and pinches him with the miseries of his indigestion. 

Anyhow, my pastor is getting sluggish. His 
features are unnatural, and his afternoon siestas 
are punctuated by great snores, the like of which 
I never heard even from a child of the world. His 
nights are spent in vigils punctuated by doses of 
paregoric and dashes from his nuptial couch greatly 
harassing to me. His night-mares are crowded with 
horrors that match the Valkyries of delirium trem¬ 
ens. His jaws need rest, his stomach a vacation in 
which it must do absolutely no work except such as 
will help it get into condition. Death from starva¬ 
tion must be terrible, but death from gluttony is 
most horrible. I am filling a basket with cakes 
and other goodies which once delighted me, but now 
fill me with loathing whenever I look at them. I 
am going home and my husband will visit his Alma 
Mater and board at the college club. It is his only 
remedy if he is to continue his usefulness. 

We will both be absent and the house will be 
silent as a tomb, except when the rooms catch up 
the echoes of a wagon rumbling by, or the yell of 
a mid-night cat. 

Right here let me tell you that “the ghosts” have 
come. Just one month after the “bounteous dona¬ 
tion” the trouble began. Our nights were disturbed 
by muffled sounds as of a crying distressed child. 
We could hear the dreadful wail in every room and 
even in the cellar. When the cries ceased there 
was a scratching, scraping sound in the partitions 
and in the ceilings. We looked everywhere; but of 
course our quest was in vain. The sounds contin¬ 
ued with little interim. We asked ourselves whether 
this was not the haunt, the banche of the old days 


64 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

when the manse was the hostelry of the town. We 
felt sure that if this haunt knew the sacred use to 
which the house was now being put he would vacate; 
but how to communicate with him and tell him that 
a change of tenure has taken place we know not. 
My husband does not believe in haunts; but he does 
believe that there are unearthly and most disquiet¬ 
ing noises in this house. They are not like the 
dreams and “mares” that come to mince-pie eaters, 
although we do eat mince pies every evening. We 
have so many we can’t let them spoil. 

We hear these sounds by day as well as by night. 
They have continued for days and nights and if they 
do not soon cease they will drive me mad. The du¬ 
ties of a country parson’s wife are harassing and 
perplexing and exacting enough, but to be compelled 
to harbor a haunt who makes a mistake in coming 
to a manse instead of hotel is enough to make me 
grey and drive me daft. I think my husband’s in¬ 
digestion is the child of the bounteous donation 
and the haunt combined. 

Even our cat has left us. She came here when 
we came, and was such a comfort; but ever since 
these noises began we have missed her from her 
sleeping rug and her dish of milk by the back door 
remains untasted. Anyhow we are going away and 
I expect to remain until the ghost is transferred 
to another place of usefulness. 

My husband and I have talked over the whole 
subjects of ghosts and haunts. He tells me there 
is no proof that disembodied spirits ever can give 
information concerning the bourhe that lies beyond. 
There is a class of spirits known as demons, “un¬ 
clean spirits.” In Old Testament times communi¬ 
cations with them was always strictly prohibited, 
not because they can tell us anything about the 
unseen world that we are not to know, but because 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


65 


they are lying and deceiving spirits. He says when 
so-called mediums communicate with spirits they 
always! communicate witb\ demons and that the 
whole subject of spiritism is the work of the devil. 
He says he does not like me to write in my biog¬ 
raphy that we believe that this house is haunted. 
They told me it is haunted before we moved into 
it. 

I don't see why I ever came here. There is 
always something to worry me. A secretary is 
coming, or I do not wear clothing becoming a min¬ 
ister's wife or I have deeply offended Mrs. X by 
always avoiding her at church and never speaking 
to her; and she threatens to bake no more pies for 
me and I must “cook my own soap.” In fact the 
whole life of a country parson's wife is distracting 
and disheartening in the extreme, especially of a 
young and inexperienced wife. My husband says 
if I would pray more and go right on in the line of 
duty, I’d be happy; but how can even a preacher's 
wife be happy and pray and smile when she feels 
like landing a solar plexus below the groin of some 
maddening, fault-finding sister in the church milit¬ 
ant. He says my Christian experience is not as 
ripe as it should be. I feel that it will never be 
quite ripe until I get to the Father's house. I 
never sing with joy, “Ring the bells of heaven.” I 
think we had better sing more about blowing the 
fog-horns to keep the poor old raft on which most 
of us are working our way down the stream of time, 
from colliding with all the ridiculous craft sailing 
on life’s ocean. I find that for me the surf is al¬ 
ways breaking over some shoal I have not charted, 
and it keeps me busy with all the whistles and horns 
and bells agoing to keep from losing my course. 

You think I am rambling; but if you lived in 
this house you would be zigzagging and never say 


66 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

a wise word or think a sane thought or utter an 
opinion without someone contradicting or at least 
disputing it. I admit I am not quite the same person 
I was before the whining and scraping amid decks 
began in this house. 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


67 


CHAPTER IX 
PUPPETS 

“Little images that they place in the very bowing of 
the vaults of churches, that look as if they held up the 
church, but are but puppets.” 

That was a happy day for me when my husband 
received a letter from the president of a certain 
university, notifying him that by a unanimous vote 
of the Board of Trustees, the degree of Doctor of 
Divinity had been conferred upon him. The Presi¬ 
dent, in his letter, said he took pleasure in notify¬ 
ing my husband of this great honor; because he 
knew of no man who more richly deserved the degree 
than he. Of course I felt the truth of what that 
President said with regard to my husband and I 
wondered what I could do to acquaint our Com¬ 
munity Church of the fact that he was so well 
thought of, and his attainments so highly appreci¬ 
ated. I felt always that no congregation fully ap¬ 
preciated him. I made up my mind that if he would 
consent, we would invite the entire congregation 
and have a sort of “coming out party” for him. I 
offered to pay for the refreshments for the occasion. 
My husband always goes fifty-fifty on all fees re¬ 
ceived for marriages. 

Now what do you think? When I proposed that 
party my husband deliberately set his back against 
it. He said the degree did not mean much, not 
really as much as the degree of Ph. D. he had re¬ 
ceived some years before in course of study. He 
said, if you wish to see how the degree of ‘‘doctor” 
has been trailed in the dust see the latest telephone 
directory. “Doctor C. Henry Gruver makes a spec- 


68 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


ialty of the eye and ear and setting of bones of the 
entire cat family. His hospital is equipped with the 
most modern appliances for this humane work.” 

He finished his inhumanly tantalizing speech by 
saying, “I think in the next directory I will have 
my name placed right under the name of “Dr. Henry 
Gruver’s—Dr. M. M. Specialist in Divinity.” 

As usual, after such sarcasm and inhuman treat¬ 
ment on the part of my husband I go to bed with a 
headache. I made up my mind that I would not 
occupy the same bed with such a man of low in¬ 
stincts. It provoked me beyond expression to re¬ 
alize that I had spent many years of my life work¬ 
ing upon such a lump of clay. But do you know be¬ 
fore I fell asleep, I came to the conclusion that Hub 
in this instance like in almost every other, is about 
right. 

Of all degrees conferred upon mortals by their 
fellows,- there is no degree quite so elastic as that 
of “Doctor”—none is quite so expansive, none prom¬ 
ises so much and often yields so little. Just to hear 
the title without a qualifying adjective, is to leave 
you guessing, wondering and waiting for the an¬ 
nounced “Doctor” to put himself into the class to 
which he belongs, to prove himself as ass or philo¬ 
sopher, a divine—a student and erudite in God's 
great world of nature or revelation— a true disciple 
of Esculapius or a peddler of nostrums, one who 
farms the community for his own harvesting or 
touches his patients with the magic that thrills 
the nerves, quickens the pulse and makes elastic 
the step. 

This mercenary age in which we live has com¬ 
mercialized everything under the sun from rags and 
old iron to the body and souls of women and men, 
the flower that God meant to bloom for the poor as 
well as the rich, the birds that sing as well as those 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


69 


that croak—all and everything has been converted 
into a money-maker. 

It is therefore not at all surprising that the 
doctorate has been commercialized. In some coun¬ 
tries the degree of M. D. and D. D. S. have been 
placed so high that there is no golden wand long 
enough to touch them, unless wielded by hands 
that are under the control of brain, but then there 
are others who once plumed themselves with 
eagle wings that have been sheared and shorn until 
they waddle and wabble in the company of mud- 
hens. We have seen the degree of ‘‘Doctor of 
Divinity” conferred on pastors because they raised 
$1,000 for their denominational college, or because 
their fathers before them bore the degree, or be¬ 
cause they were diplomatic enough to enter upon 
the successful work of some one before them who 
prayed and builded in the Master’s Name. They 
themselves never did any real building or thinking 
for the sake of others, but always knew how to 
farm for themselves, the soil made rich with almost 
martyr blood of others. Or they have loaned them¬ 
selves to work for a fad or folly until they are in the 
circle of faddist and dance with the follies. This has 
so cheapened the degree of D. D. that some men 
refuse to bear it, lest they be mistaken in this row 
and rank of charlatans, fopps and faddists; there 
is so little divinity in either the giving or getting 
of the degree. 

What a pity that those who by years of hard 
and soul-trying work should be compelled to refuse 
it, because of what I know to be true, namely, there 
is so little divinity in the giving or getting of the 
degree that neither is worth while. 

As I told you, my husband received the degree of 
Ph. D. after a brief course of study, and highly 
appreciated it. The other degree he received after 


70 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

years of hard work in the ministry and building of 
congregations and the writing of articles and books; 
but the degrees made him no better preacher and 
conferred upon him no powers, human or divine, he 
did not posses before. On the train and street and 
in a crowd where he is not known, to have some one 
address him as “Doctor” puts him into a class and 
sets people guessing; but what of that? 

The degree used to mean that the man so honored, 
knew his Bible and believed it; now it often in¬ 
cludes those who know something about the Bible 
and disbelieve it. They are ignorant of God's medi¬ 
cine for sin-sick souls, and prescribe the nostrums 
of materialism and skepticism to heal the ills of the 
age and stay the pestilence of unbelief that rush 
souls to perdition. 

There is a great company of workers in all pro¬ 
fessions and callings in life who are never honored 
with or by degrees. They toil patiently content 
to see the work grow in their hands into colossal or 
even meager success. They seldom receive resolu¬ 
tions of thanks or a word of commendation. They 
are glad for the opportunity to love and to work 
and to play, with sufficient time to look the great 
and good God into the face and thank Him for op¬ 
portunity, redemption and the hope of heaven. A 
great company of them is year by year sweeping 
through the gates into the Celestial City, whilst 
those who tried to hypnotize and paralize “by the 
strange spell a name,” remain outside “with dogs 
and sorcerers and whoremongers and idolators and 
whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.” 

Once when we entertained Synod in a large con¬ 
gregation, out of a delegation of three hundred or 
more, the only man who sent my pastor a request 
that he have someone at the train on his arrival, to 
take charge of his suit-case and have it conveyed to 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 71 

a place of entertainment of his own and not our sel¬ 
ection was a doctor of divinity, distinguished for 
the fact that he had been able to install himself and 
fatten upon work accomplished by others before him 
in this particular charge. 

In fact we find when we dissect the character of 
the majority of doctors of divinity, that they are 
made of the same clay that makes up other frail 
mortals; only they were turned on a different lathe 
and not glazed with the same glaze; but after all, 
they are the same clay. When reduced to the ever¬ 
lasting formula over which the devil rconstructed 
Eve they are found equal to the same capacities for 
good and evil, for wire-pulling and fixing delegates 
to church conventions as their brethren in dirty 
politics “of the world.” The grace of God keeps 
many of them from working to their capacity; but 
others rejecting that grace work overtime. 

I have given away no secret. “By their fruits 
ye shall know them.” The crow is known by his 
plumage, but his croak and caw does quite as much 
to advertise him. I do not blame church dignitar¬ 
ies near as much for what they are as for what they 
pretend to be. 

Withal, I know no fraternity with initiations and 
secret rites so true as the rank and file of gospel 
ministers, so true to their calling and their God 
and to each other, called in one hope, one Lord, one 
faith, one baptism, they compose a vast fraternity 
of good fellowship and willing to help each other 
and the rest of mankind, in the hour of adversity 
and trial. They have done and are doing more to 
keep this old world from perdition than any other 
people on earth. 

We have had the scare of our lives. It was worse 
than the scraping and unearthly noise under the 
floor and between the walls. Supposed ghosts may 


72 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

get on your nerves, but to have one’s trust betrayed 
by someone whom you have learned to love wrings 
the heart. It makes you feel that you are through 
with everybody and trust no one and nothing except 
God. It makes you doubt everybody, your husband, 
your mother-in-law and your own grandmother. 

On February 13th the manse was robbed. Hub 
and l went out for the afternoon to visit the sick 
in the parish. This damp, raw weather has caused 
much sickness. We told Maggie she might take the 
napkins I had given her to hem with her and visit 
one of the neighbors. We were gone until four. 

When we came back every drawer in every bu¬ 
reau was on the floor and the contents scattered, 
the pictures were awry on the wall as if they had 
seen something or were trying to turn their backs 
on what had been going on in the rooms. The matt¬ 
ress and covers were torn apart. But the worst of 
it all was my solid silver, two rings and some of my 
finest embroidery were gone. My husband suffered 
least, which made him conclude that a woman was 
at the bottom of the affair. 

Maggie was not to be found. She had been to 
the neighbor she visited whenever she had the after¬ 
noon to do as she pleased, but she had left an hour 
before. No one had seen her after she went home. 

My suspicious husband said: “I fear your confi¬ 
dence was misplaced, my dear. I believed in Maggie 
because you did, but I had my suspicions. In fact 
how do you know but that all this was not carefully 
planned and that she had an accomplice? What 
after all do you really know about her past? 

I did not answer, but was far from convinced. 
I brushed the hot tears from my face, not because 
I felt the truth of what he was saying, but because 
I had lost the most treasured things I had ever 
owned. There was one occurrence that made me sus- 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


73 


picious. I had seen her talking and laughing with 
a young man whom she had fed in the kitchen a few 
days before and who told her that he was in tem¬ 
porary hard luck. He was going to a permanent 
job promised him in Lancaster. He was walking 
and “foraging” so as not to be entirely “on his up¬ 
pers” when he began his new work. 

We forgot all about supper in our feverish anxi¬ 
ety to find out what was missing and in answering 
the calls at the front door and side door, for the 
sympathetic and (I suspicion) curious neighbors. 
Of course it was dark now and long after our sup¬ 
per hour when without knocking someone opened 
the kitchen door and we heard something rattle 
slightly. Hub rushed to the kitchen, light in hand, 
and found Maggie apparently exhausted huddled on 
the floor with her back against the wall. 

As soon as she saw Hub she said: 

“I got it all back. It's in there,” pointing to the 
dirty distended pillow case in front of her. 

Of course I was at my husband’s side as she gasp¬ 
ingly told her experience. She said when she came 
home she found the kitchen door wide open. When 
she entered she heard a noise upstairs. She stole 
up the back stairs, realizing that there were burg¬ 
lars. She saw two apparently young men, one of 
them whom she had fed a few mornings before. 
They had apparently finished the job. She secreted 
herself in the closet at the head of the stairs as 
they started down to the kitchen. Then she stepped 
from her hiding place and saw them gather the loot 
into the pillow cases. The silver clanged as it fell 
from careless hands into the improvised sack. 

“This rings like a string of sleigh-bells. Now for 
an early start!” said the one who made himself the 
custodian of that part of the loot. “Late start.” 
grunted the other as he folded his overcoat over hi? 


74 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

bag. Then they went out the rear door down the lot. 

It took Maggie an instant to realize that to call 
help would lose sight of the thieves. She followed 
them and saw them walk apparently at leisure down 
the alley, then across some vacant lots to a twenty 
acre field on the other side of which was a wood of 
heavy timber. They went across the field and she 
followed along the side on the public road without 
meeting anyone. When they arrived in the woods 
she had more difficulty in keeping them in sight. 
She saw they were headed for the “colliers' cabin/' 
where in days gone by wood choppers had their 
quarters. They were lost in the cabin fully half an 
hour. When they finally emerged they had donned 
their overcoats and walked rapidly toward the high¬ 
way leading through the village to the city. The 
February night was closing upon the scene when 
she entered the cabin. She could still see that ashes 
on the hearth lay undisturbed. The rude floor was 
nailed. Where were the bags containing the loot? 
Under the bunks? Perhaps. 

On hands and knees she crept beneath. The floor 
was in place but not nailed. In an instant she haul¬ 
ed out both bags from under the loose boards. 

When her story was told in less time than it takes 
me to write it, my pastor said? 

“Maggie, you are a heroine.” 

I took her by the arm and drew her to my bosom, 
but said not a word. When I released her she said. 
“Dear girl, what are you crying about? I only did 
my duty.” 

I know now that all she had told me about her¬ 
self is true. She is not the servant in this house 
any longer. She is my companion, and friend as 
long as we both live. 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


75 


CHAPTER X 
MUSIC AND MUSICIANS 

“Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, 

To soften rocks or bend a knotted oak. 

I have read that things inanimate have moved 
And as with living souls have betn informed 
By magic numbers and persuasive sounds.” 

Did you ever belong to church choir? If you did 
not and were never a pastor's wife, you have missed 
some rich experiences; above all—you know noth¬ 
ing of the trials and tribulations of the choir leader, 
the insults and the humiliations. You know nothing 
of the pangs the soprano endures when she cannot 
sing all the solos and so misses many compliments 
from the audience; nor do you know the profundi¬ 
ties of the basso as he causes the spine of the 
audience to vibrate as the string beneath the bow. 

The first choir of our first charge was called the 
“Bushel Choir" because it contained exactly four 
Pecks. There were really five Pecks, for the organist 
was the fifth. Anybody buying a commodity worth 
while is satisfied with four pecks to the bushel, but 
when the Bushel Choir came to that church they 
insisted upon bringing five Pecks. But inasmuch 
as one of the Pecks was very little and another 
one was so coarse, we had only four good Pecks. 
The biggest Peck was the organist. He always in¬ 
sisted in playing “Home, Sweet Home" when the 
offering was being taken. Whether it was the tune 
he played or the natural parsimoniousness of the 
people, I do not know, but we “ran behind" in the 
budget and that a live Church Council considers 
worse than poor preaching. To be truthful no¬ 
body really “ran behind" in those collections, nor 
ran in front, they were all equally slow in giving. 


76 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

That organist had a sense of eternal fitness in all 
his music. He played the “Stars-Spangled Banner” 
when the pall bearers bore the last remains of a most 
respectable old lady up the aisle, and when on Easter 
the pastor led the confirmation class up the aisle, 
before he preached the sermon to the young people, 
that organist had the whole Bushel Choir time their 
rendition of “Onward Christian Soldiers” for the 
occasion, and it was a mere accident that they sung 
“Satan leading on” when they did; but it spoiled 
the sloemnity of the whole service. 

The only time we ever had a wedding in that 
church he forgot to bring the Wedding March, so 
he played, “Tramp, tramp, the boys are marching” 
which to say the least made the stepping of the 
whole wedding party decidedly awkward. One 
had a sort of “yoddle” in her voice. She contracted 
it in scarlet fever. It yoddled for her at the wrong 
time and detracted from the harmony of the song, 
and of course jarred on the audience. But withal 
the Bushel Choir did good service. It volunteered 
to sing on every occasion and was punctual; and 
above all because they were all Pecks in the same 
bushel, they did all their fighting at home and among 
themselves. They were staunch citizens in that 
community and were respected even though they 
were deficient in voice culture. 

They are all gone now and a new organ and a new 
choir has taken their place; but if the desire to sing 
enables the departed to enter the celestial choir 
they are in the choir, and something more than long 
practice has mellowed and attuned their voices to 
the harmony of angels’ harps, and to hear them 
there will be ample compensation for all the an¬ 
noyance they caused their pastor in the terrestrial 
choir. 

We have had the misfortune to have other than 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


77 


Bushel Choirs in other churches in which my hus¬ 
band has been pastor, which we would gladly have 
exchanged for the five Pecks of the old fashioned, 
oddly garbed Bushel Choir, if it would have been 
possible to call them back out of the echoless past. 

We had a choir leader who trained and sang with 
the choirs for two generations, in the same church. 
He trained fathers and their sons, mothers and 
their daughters as they came and went. He, wonder¬ 
ful as it may seem, still lives. He has lost most of 
his hair, is slightly deaf, and wears glasses of a 
highly magnifying power, all of which is of course 
no matter of surprise to all who realize the frailties 
of advancing age and the difficulties that beset the 
career of a choir leader. He was always just in his 
decisions, and a man of sterling worth. That gave 
him his influence in that choir and saved his pas¬ 
tor many worries. 

That choir leader was a marvel. He was both 
the constitution and the by-laws of the organiza¬ 
tion. He was the sergeant at arms and the judge 
and jury which tried every case of improper de¬ 
corum. He invoked the help of neither pastor nor 
council. 

There was another choir which was only second 
to the Bushel Choir in the making melody in their 
hearts although they made little for an appreciative 
ear. Their music was a thing of the soul—and 
though it was their soul, and their discords were 
their sweetest airs, they led the song of praise in 
that country church quite as well as their pastor 
could lead the congregation through the green past¬ 
ures and by the still waters of complete trust and 
obedience to the Heavenly Shepherd. This choir 
which has long since gone to that land where, 

“Rich celestial music thrills the air 

From hosts on hosts of shining ones” 


78 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MARY JANE 


was appreciated not as much for any gift of song 
that they possessed as for the efforts they made to 
lead the worship of the people who came to that 
lovely country church set among the graves where 
the forefathers of the hamlet sleep their long sleep. 
To my friend and myself that Choir was always 
known as the Pill Choir. We gave it that name 
because their favorite anthem was “I am a Pilgrim 
and a Stranger.” They repeated the first syllable of 
Pilgrim until they turned red in the face with the 
effort. I never blamed them for singing “I am a 
pil—I am a pil—I am a pil” near as much as I did 
the man who set the words to that music. Of 
course it was my lack of reverence that caused me 
to look at the friend by my side to catch the display 
of mirth pictured in her good natured face. By 
the time the choir delivered its last pill shrill and 
musical as the last note in a feline concert, all rev¬ 
erence had gone from our souls. Of course that 
was not the feeling of the congregation who were 
as proud of their choir as they were of their neat 
and well appointed church. 

I should be ashamed to confess how mischiev¬ 
ous and irreverent we were, my friend and I, but I 
am trying to show you how difficult it was for me 
to sustain my reputation as a preacher's wife, for 
solemnity and an at all times worshipful demeanor. 
Often I was asked when the service was over and 
I received the greetings of the sisters of the con¬ 
gregation, whom I saw ‘‘once in four weeks” for 
that was as often as my husband preached in that 
congregation, what I thought of the “music today” 
and I replied invariably. “The choir did its best 
today.” 

I myself am not noted for my gift of producing 
sweet melody in song (perhaps that is the reason I 
am so good a critic of the best efforts of others): 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


79 


but these people were anxious to please me as well as 
they were my husband, and were eager to hear from 
my lips that they had succeeded and my reply was 
satisfactory to all concerned. I am sure that He 
who has put music into the sighing of the reed and 
the rustle of the leaves in the summer breeze was 
well pleased with the efforts of the “Pill Choir” be¬ 
cause they did their best and as their knowledge 
taught them. Their singing led the soul of that 
congregation quite as well, if not better than a 
prima donna could have done. 

You have heard of the mother who was gifted 
soloist, and whose heart had been broken by the 
wayward career of her prodigal son who was in¬ 
duced to sing at an evangelistic meeting, “0 where 
is my wandering boy tonight,” with such pathos 
and fervor that her son who sat in the rear of the 
tent, was so moved that he rushed up after the 
song was finished and threw himself weeping into 
the arms of his mother, she made that solo both 
the song and the sermon of the evening. Music, 
more than any other art, tells the truth of the 
soul, and awakes in others the most contrite con¬ 
fession—itj does more, it leads the contrite soul 
to the unfathomed seas of God's forgiving and ab¬ 
solution. 

We had yet another choir which was famous for 
its gifted soprano. The fame of the choir lay in 
the soprano. When on rare occasions another was 
compelled to take her place that choir was like a 
violin without its E string; the bass and alto and 
tenor were like an orchestra without a cornet, like 
a zoological garden without its collection of song¬ 
birds. She was a song-bird of rare plumage, be¬ 
cause she enriched her song, so she thought, with 
her costly apparel. Her hats made one think of 
tropical forests filled with birds of paradise, and 


80 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

mocking birds whose plumage gave wings to her 
voice as it thrilled into upper G. Like other charm¬ 
ers wooing a caress, her fair unclad bosom swelled 
with the passion of her song, until the lust of the 
eye made the soul traitor to the spirit of divine 
worship. 

Yes, that soprano could sing and did sing; but 
she thought more of her pride and vanity than she 
did of her pastor and her church and the glory of 
God, and therefore when she was asked to let an¬ 
other soprano have part in the music on a very 
special occasion, she refused. 

The choir has been called the “war department” 
of the church, but it is a misnomer^ The war de¬ 
partment does not make war. The militant choir 
does. The war department furnishes material to 
bring the war into which a nation plunges, to a 
speedy and successful termination. The militant 
choir brings defeat, division, destruction in fact, 
and paralyzes the best efforts of a whole congrega¬ 
tion and pastor. 

It is a great comfort to a pastor to know that 
in heaven there will be no division and bickering 
n the choir, and that when the throng is assemb¬ 
ling for worship no news will be brought that the 
choir will refuse to sing because someone has been 
given a more important and prominent part than 
another. What a cheerless and changed place heav¬ 
en would become if the music would depend upon 
some church choirs with which we, my husband 
and I, have been compelled to work and worship. 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


81 


CHAPTER XI 
FORM AND PIETY 

“The veil spun from the cobweb fashion of the times 

To hide the feeling heart.” 

My husband knew before the meeting of the 
Council that for him and our congregation, there 
was serious business ahead. 

After the routine business was over, the promp- 
ous Mr. Whirly (you do not know him, but his name 
is so suggestive of his life that I must mention it. 
He has whirled himself from one business to another 
and always to the hurt of someone else until now 
he is in the ice business. He is hot and withering 
enough to lose most of this trade his deceased pre¬ 
decessor had, and melt half his ice in the loading. 
He came to our congregation from the Methodist 
and was a Unitarian before that,) said: 

‘Tastor, I have an important matter to bring 
before you. You have heard of the agitation about 
a vested choir and a full liturgical service. You omit 
this indrawit (inroit) and the colic (collect). All 
the pastors of any standing have both. Why not 
we ? I move you therefore we have the whole thing 
and that our choir be surspliced (surpliced).” 

My husband said, “You are not very clear in your 
terms, but I know what you mean. This church 
has lived to grow in usefulness for fifty years. Why 
now all the change ?” 

Another member of the Council insisted as he 
seconded Whirl's motion, upon the question and it 
was carried by a two-thirds vote. 

In a few Sabbaths after that we had our vested 
choir. We remembered how the father^ of the 


82 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

congregation came to church and as they seated 
themselves, reverently bowed their heads in a mom¬ 
ent of silent prayer. There was no liturgy. The 
opening service consisted in a| simple invocation 
and a hymn of praise fervently sung by the con¬ 
gregation. But now the times are different. We are 
living in a new age and a change in the forms of 
worship is demanded. Every congregation at all 
progressive has a vested choir and a vested and 
frocked preacher. For years already preachers are 
accustomed to button their vests on their backs. 
In this way people can tell a minister at any time 
and conduct themselves accordingly, which they 
of course always do. 

This change in form of worship demands new 
adaptation of the minister to his people. In the 
pulpit it calls for alertness and punctuality; and 
even for a change in the cut of his hair, the timing 
and length of his footsteps. You will understand 
what I mean when I tell you that when the organ 
sounds the precise note the vested choir must begin 
its chant or a hymn in the vestry remote—how re¬ 
mote depends upon the length of the building in 
which the performance is staged. Woe be to the 
preacher if he has not schooled his step in keeping 
with the music, or has not doffed his robes at the 
opportune time or has the least creak in his shoes. 

When it was resolved by the consistory of our 
congregation that we must have a vested choir, and 
that my pastor must wear the ecclesiastical robe 
best adapted to ourl creed and appointments! in 
church furniture, my pastor and I his wife, were 
filled with consternation if not thrown into actual 
hysterics. It was all so new, so sudden. 

You ask, “why did he not assert himself against 
the innovation?” You must know that when a good 
sized consistory resolves, the pastor must resolve 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


83 


one of two things—perform the resolution of the 
consistory, or he must get his packing cases from 
cellar and garret and fall to work, not exactly to 
please himself or to keep in condition, but his health 
or that of his wife demands a change. 

If he has seen a change coming in the oldest and 
most substantial members because of any sin he 
had the temerity to rebuke, if he has noticed the 
coldness in the hand shaking and their stubborn 
adherence to the opposing side in any measure he 
has advocated, he may have been smart enough to 
avert calamity at the hands of outrageous fortune 
and sought out a place before the final calamity. 
If he is a skilled packer his goods will be in readiness 
to ship before he hands in his resignation. He may 
then be able to say that “God has called him” in¬ 
stead of realizing that the devil has compelled him 
to a new field of labor. Of course if he has no fore¬ 
sight, hind sight, much less in-sight, he will be in 
the fix of the Alpine tourist who by a single shot of 
his revolver, precipitates and avalanche and ther- 
by carries himself into the eternal frost. What his 
future usefulness may be depends upon his reliance 
upon divine Providence. One thing is quite sure—it 
is very seldom that when a minister is kicked out 
of an influential congregation, he bounds into a 
“flowery bed of ease” in the ecclesiastical garden. 
He generally lands upon a rock, and although he 
suffers from the jolt, it at least affords him a good 
foundation upon which to build new resolutions; 
and so unwittingly and perhaps relunctantly he 
obeys the Master's injunction, “If any man will 
come after me let him deny himself, take up his 
cross and follow me.” 

When our congregation resolved to have a vested 
choir and preacher, my pastor ventured^ to ask 
“Why?” He told them that for more than fifty 


84 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MARY JANE 

years their congregation had been noted for the 
simplicity of worship, fervency of piety and good 
works. 

He was told that they were behind the times, 
and the solemnity so essential to modern worship 
was lacking. “Did not the high priest wear robes 
fashioned and worn according to the express com¬ 
mand of God? They were the insignia of his office 
and the expression of its dignity. They insisted 
that a missionary secretary had cautioned them not 
to support a mission where the pastor did not con¬ 
duct worship in a dignified and fitting manner. 

My pastor ventured to say that Peter and Paul 
never carried ecclesiastical robes in their missionary 
journeys, either to add to their dignity or authority. 

Their service was as simple as it was powerful. 
The introduction of ecclesiastical regalia resemb¬ 
ling that worn by Old Testament priests was simp¬ 
ly a Jewdyizing of the church of Jesus Christ, and 
was in a large measure the cause of her loss of 
power. 

That started the avalanche. It swept him clear 
from all sympathy that Council ever had for him. 
They told him their congregation needed to be up to 
date and required a modern pastor and that they 
had money to pay for both. 

We had known, my pastor and I, for some time 
already, that the choir desired vestments. One per¬ 
son, it was argued, would be dressed no better 
than another, and there would not be jealousy and 
envy among the lady members of the choir. Of 
course the better thinking and wiser knew that 
what that choir really desired was the pomp and 
show of the parade which is known by the more 
euphonious title of “pro-and recessional.” 

The resolution of the Council that evening, was 
therefore not unexpected. In fact I had planned 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MARY JANE 


85 


for it, and prayed about it. But nevertheless I 
was indescribably sad. The first thing I said to 
him as he entered, was. 

“We are going to move. I know it; but where 
are we going?” 

That night we two sat long discussing what was 
to be done. Should he obey the wishes of the 
Council and do what “other large, rich and influent¬ 
ial congregations were doing? Had not the presi¬ 
dent of our synod told him that the time was at 
hand when the minister who refused to wear vest¬ 
ments and have a crucifix on his communion table, 
with an image of the Christ affixed, before which 
to return thanks after the offering, need not ex¬ 
pect a call? But should he who had always dis¬ 
counted formality and emphasized the adoning of a 
meek and godly life, now grieve those who were 
spiritually minded, by himself plunging into for¬ 
mality? But where was he to go? Where would 
he find a charge? 

In a few days after the meeting of the Council, 
the Lord already pointed a way. In every evil there 
is a vein of good. My husband received a letter as 
follows: 

“I do not understand how your people can per¬ 
sist in the old fogy forms of worship. My congre¬ 
gation compels me to be robed, and my choir is 
vested. We have a high altar and crucifix and we 
burn candles and we have altar cloths suitable for 
each season in the church-year. 

'‘You doubtless remember when we were at col¬ 
lege and the old college church was remodeled, and 
some of the more progressive advocated a reading 
desk in the chancel, what a storm of protest it pro¬ 
voked. Well, they have long since gotten the read¬ 
ing desk and a great deal more. 


86 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

'‘In fact a great change has come. The church 
believes in the dignity and comety of worship. I do 
not see why Rome should have a monopoly in these 
things. Preaching the Word as our preachers all 
do, I think we have a right to any adaophora we may 
see fit to adopt. I am no formalist. 

“I have discontinued the mid-week service. Our 
people are busy and many attend lodge and places 
of amusement on that evening. Our 1 attendance 
was dicouragingly small-so small that I plainly told 
my congregation that I can spend my time to better 
advantage. 

“We have our Boy Scouts and Camp-fire girls to¬ 
gether once a month. On these evenings they play 
games together and have simple dances, and it does 
wonders in keeping their interest alive in the church. 
These two societise do more for my church than 
the Y. P. S. C. E. ever did. Our Y. P. died a natural 
death after we got the Scouts and Camp-fire. 

“By the way—How would you like to make a 
change? The growing congregation in H. located 
on “The Hill,” a rapidly developing section of the 
city is about to be vacant. I have been asked to 
recommend a good man. Do you wish to go? Say 
the word and I'll see that you get there. 

‘‘Let me say, this congregation is made up of 
different denominations but the people are just as 
loyal as in any other church of our denomination and 
call themselves a “community church/' but that 
need not deter you from accepting the charge. Just 
as soon as we have a majority of members of our 
own denomination, we will see to it that the com¬ 
munity talk ceases. (No deception in that). 

Very truly, your old Chum, 
Joseph Wise. 


Dickensville, Catchyou Co. Pa. 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


87 


When I had finished reading the letter, I handed 
it back to him, saying, “That, my Dear, is the solu¬ 
tion. You will preach for the community church. 
The call of man is the voice of God.” 

This all may be painful news to you, as it was to 
me. Let me add I have something more pleasing 
to tell you, I have found out about Maggie. She 
told me the whole story. As usual there was a 
miserable, contemptible fellow of “the upper crust,” 
who humiliated her and caused her to lose her repu¬ 
tation (not her character), broke her heart, and 
caused her to lose her hold on life. 

Her mother was a widow and made a living for 
Maggie and herself and sent her girl to school by 
working for some of the parents of her daughter’s 
school-mates. In high school, when Maggie was 17 
and a senior, one of the young fellows, a year older, 
from a fine home and rich and influential parents, 
made love to her. He called on her at her home. 
Her mother warned her that no good would ever 
come from his attention, but Maggie cared for him 
and assured her mother that she was too suspicious. 
One evening he came and asked her mother to per¬ 
mit Maggie to accompany him to an entertainment. 
Reluctantly she consented. About two o’clock in 
the morning he brought her home. He had driven 
to the city five miles awey, taken her to a cabaret 
where doctored wine flowed freely. 

She had not fully recovered from her stupor when 
she arrived at home. She told her frantic mother 
tearfully, that she had a violent headache and went 
to bed. Next morning she gave her a full account 
of all she knew of the young man’s conduct and 
promised never to have anything to do with him 
again. 

All might have been well had not some of the 
faster set who also were on “a lark” that evening 


88 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

in the same place, made a public scandal out of the 
poor girl's experience, into which she had been un¬ 
warily led. 

Maggie's mother a few days afterward received 
a letter from the mother of the young man, giving 
her a garbled account of their experience, and how 
Maggie, he said, suggested going there for supper. 
She warned her that if she ever “enticed her boy 
again,” both would be exposed. 

When one is poor and comparatively without ‘‘in¬ 
fluence” there is no redress. “Evil stands upon 
the neck of good and rules the world alone.” 

Even her pastor to whom she appealed said he 
was “helpless.” Everybody had thought so well 
of them both. All he could advise was to “live it 
down.” 

They took their pastor's advice, but being shun¬ 
ned by the “well thinking public” and constantly 
slighted by erstwhile friends made them unhappy. 

Perhaps this experience did more than anything 
to undermine their health and when her mother 
contracted a severe cold it turned into pneumonia 
and in less than a week Maggie stood at the open 
grave of her mother comparatively alone in the 
world, although their former friends repented of 
their unjust suspicions and their too ready inclina¬ 
tion to credit evil reports. 

After the funeral Maggie sold their simple fur¬ 
niture, and with this money and their savings paid 
her debts and quit the neighborhood, telling no one 
where she was going. When she came to me she 
had only two dollars and her simple though scrupul¬ 
ously clean wardrobe. The more I see of her the 
more faith I have in the truthfulness of her story. 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


89 


CHAPTER XII 
EXPERIENCES 

I am writing this in the new Manse in the city 
of H. Before I tell you of our coming here, I will 
remind you that it is some time since I, Mary Jane, 
have attempted to write my biography's very ordi¬ 
nary and very strange experiences. After all, the 
ordinary experiences of very ordinary people make 
up the sum of human happiness and real progress. 
Our extraordinary experiences are like fevers. They 
use up very prodigally our vitality and leave us too 
prostrated to make the best of our ordinary duties 
and pleasures. 

I feel like saying with Dobbin : 

‘‘Confound the cats; all cats—alway. 

Cats of all colors, black, white, grey— 

By night a nuisance and by day.” 

I must now confess how unsophisticated we, my 
husband and I, really are. There is some excuse 
for me, because I have never been to the theological 
seminary, and I have never traveled much, and like 
all home-keeping people, have homely wits. The 
whining, scraping noises in the ceiling and between 
the floor in the historic manse were made by the 
heirloom cat that came with the house. It was her 
extraordinary experience that nearly finished her. 
As it was, her long fast, the stuffy atmosphere and 
her contracted quarters, together with a feverish 
anxiety to get out of her distressing surroundings 
has left her only the shadow of her former feline 
aggressiveness and her too keen desire to gratify 
an abnormal curiosity. 

When the carpenter took up some flooring to be 


90 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

replaced by new and better material, he went for his 
lunch and in his absence, the cat committed the 
most assinine blunder of her life. She crept into 
the opening, exploring the whole space only to find 
after her curiousity was satisfied, that her exit 
was barred. Poor thing—How my heart swelled 
with pity when my Hub dragged out of her pre¬ 
dicament, by her tail, through an opening he made 
in the floor. She was limp, fur ruffled, and the 
shadow of her former self. It was her nine lives, 
one each day of her confinement, with one left to 
begin a new career, that saved her. Well, we left 
her for the new pastor, so that’s the end of the 
cat so far as we are concerned. 

To resume my account of how we got to the 
community church. My pastor was invited to preach 
a trial sermon and it was favorably received. There 
were many reasons why this was a real “trial ser¬ 
mon.” In the first place, the president of the Church 
Council who entertained my husband, told him that 
this being a community church, the congregation 
was made up of people of all denominations except 
Catholics, There were Several Roman Catholic 
families in the community, and although they went 
to the cathedral, he must say nothing to reflect on 
them. There were some rich Jews in the com¬ 
munity who contribute to the support of the church 
because they desire the patronage of the commun¬ 
ity. He said, the former pastor usually took his 
text from the Old Testament. There is also a very 
nice spiritist who comes to the devotional services 
and gives inspiring talks on heaven and “the wide¬ 
ness of God’s mercy.” The Christian Scientists who 
are opening a reading room, were former members 
of the community church, but they became offended 
because our predecessor once preached on “A Cult 
neither Christian nor Scientist.” 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MARY JANE 


91 


“Oh well, the great subject of sin and salvation 
lies open before us/' said my husband. 

“Yes, in a certain sense that is true, but our 
Unitarian elder would not vote for you if you were 
to insist that Jesus is God and that He died for our 
sins. It will of course be all right to preach aganst 
sin, but it depends upon what you call sin. If you 
condemn adultery, trial marriages and murder, you 
have a clear field. Of course, we suspicion some mem¬ 
bers of the choir and there is much nasty talk about 
Miss Fast and Mr. Green, but they are both so well 
connected, that our former pastor always played 
the soft pedal when he preached on disloyalty to 
the marriage vow; in fact he scarcely ever referred 
to sin. He never in his temperance sermon referred 
to the evils of the saloon, bcause the saloon-keeper 
who died a few weeks ago over the worries caused 
by the anti-saloon agitation, was in the habit of 
coming to church and was one of our best support¬ 
ers. 

He was told that there was some old fogies who 
still preach against theatres, card parties, and 
dances, but this is wasted breath, because there is 
scarcely a member of any church now-a-days who 
does not indulge in all these, in a limited degree of 
course, and we give the children dancing lessons to 
make them graceful and to keep them from being 
wall flowers at public functions. 

That night my husband went to bed with a heavy 
heart. He realized that if his village church was 
made up of sinners, this city suburb was decidedly 
worse. This congregation was made up of every 
shade of believers and non-believers and every sin 
was considered so eminently respectable that the 
devil himself could function as a member in this 
“community church.” 

When morning finally came, after an almost sleep- 


92 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

less night, he was called to breakfast. He suggested 
the reading of a chapter from the Bible, to which 
his host replied, that, inasmuch as they would study 
the Bible in Sunday school and hear it “talked about 
all day” and because it was getting late, a simple 
grace would be quite sufficient. 

The coffee was already poured, and Hub in trying 
to reverently fold his hands across his plate upset 
his coffee, so that until a napkin was folded across 
the soiled place in the cloth and the hot coffee ab¬ 
sorbed from his pantaloons, everybody began to eat 
and the “grace” "was forgotten. 

The first part of the service in the church was a 
“failure” the deacon told him, because he read the 
Collect when he should have read the Introit. He 
himself felt that it was a “failure” because his 
throat was dry and he could not intone properly, 
which the deacon had told him he must do. One 
reason they tired of his predecessor was because he 
was a “failure” in this respect. The dryness in my 
husband's throat was caused by the fact that he 
upset a bouquet and spilled the water on the Bible 
and on his notes so that the ink blurred. 

He preached on the text, “Let that mind be in 
you which was in Christ Jesus.” He emphasized 
the fact that although Jesus was God manifest in 
the flesh, we can nevertheless imitate his thought- 
habit. Such a sermon as that every congregation 
needs; and they liked it sufficiently to give him a 
call. Or was it because the Rev. Dr. Joseph Wise 
fram Dickensville, Catchyou Co. had recommended 
him so faithfully? Who knows? 

The missionary society of the denomination which 
had founded this church, came to my husband for a 
personal interview. The ladies of thesociety said 
they felt that he was the man for the place. They 
said they knew he could reconcile the haterogenous 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


93 


membership to our Bible. He was not to preach 
creed, but the Bible. They had never yet known the 
clear and forceful presentation of the Word to fail 
in the conviction of sinners. 

They were quite right; and if the Board had the 
conversion of souls in mind when they established 
that congregation, they had a noble purpose; but 
if the object was to trick the members of other de¬ 
nominations into becoming? members,) they were 
quite wrong. 

Of course all denominations in the United States, 
are guilty of proselyting. How does it come that 
there are missions among Scandinavians, for exam¬ 
ple. Why must these Mission Boards spend millions 
to proselyte people who are the equal morally and 
spiritually of those who send “missionaries” among 
them to unsettle them in the faith of their fathers 
who gave these very proselyters the religious liberty 
and the open Bible centuries ago? The great Nor¬ 
wegian Lutheran churches have been instrumental 
in making these people honest, sober, pious and in¬ 
dustrious. Why then not turn to the heathen ? “It 
is that there is rationalism and materialism among 
these people.” But have not these very mission¬ 
aries originated, or at least imbibed more rational¬ 
ism than those they say they must cure? What 
essentials to salvation can those teachers emphasize 
that have not long since been published in the creeds 
of the people they proselyte? And do these people 
not manifest their hope in Christ in the hour of 
adversity and persecution? This whole system of 
miss-spent missionary effort among Protestants de¬ 
pletes there treasuries, wastes their time, unsettles 
their own clans and makse them the laughing stock 
of the devil. This is the stock argument among the 
Romanists to prove that Protestantism is hopeless¬ 
ly divided and a failure. Has not this whole system 


94 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


of false missionary effort, this standardized well 
organized, heavily capitalized system become va 
stench in the nostrils, and the butt of ridicule 
among children of the devil ? 

For a whole day the chairman of the missionary 
board argued, plead with my pastor to accept this 
particular “community” congregation's call. They 
all believed, he said, that this was the call of the 
Lord to my husband, a call which he dare not re¬ 
fuse. And so it has come to pass that I am writing 
this in our “own hired house” in the City of H. 

Before we were established in our new home, in 
fact before we had finished arranging our furniture 
and making ourselves comfortable, a committee from 
one of the prominent secret societies called on my 
husband and told him that although they never 
asked anyone to join them, they would be glad to 
propose his name at any time. They said they hoped 
if he did not join them he would be very slow to 
identify himself with the numerous lodges which 
in the course of a few months would invite him to 
membership. I did not know much about the ways 
of the foxes and lynxes of society, nor did I be¬ 
lieve that some great men receive many flatteries 
from their foes because they hate them so cordially 
and make flattery the tool with which to probe for 
the most vulnerable part. 

The first three months of our pastorate in the 
community church abounded with invitations to 
banquets at anniversaries, for adressess at “very 
important meetings,” and with importunities to 
membership to any and all these “leading lodges” 
and “fraternities.” Everyone abounded in oppor¬ 
tunities to do good that no pastor could well forego. 
The Y. W. C. A. was just starting a branch in our 
community and needed a good president, and in half 
hour the committee from the parent society demon- 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


95 


strated that providence had sent me to their com¬ 
munity for that office. The next day the W. C. T. U. 
proved to their satisfaction that I was the very per¬ 
son to mother their organization, and the Red Cross 
early the next week had made me their chief officer. 
After that I was in bed sick with nervous prostration 
because I was like a hen with a setting of two dozen 
eggs. 

My husband too, was overwhelmed with honors. 
At least half a score of officers had called and “crav¬ 
ed a few moments of his time” to present their 
cause which up to our coming had languished for 
a worthy leader, and although he did not join me 
with prostration he felt like Atlas with all honor 
and responsibilities upon him. Of course in my 
own congregation I was the president of the Ladies 
Missionary, the chairman of the entertainment com¬ 
mittee; the chairman of the Y. P. S. C. E. and ex- 
officio chairman of the Junior societies of which 
there were three different ones in our church. I 
had a fine young ladies Bible class in Sunday school. 
The greatest honor awaited me just a month be¬ 
fore the fall election, when I was made a ward heel¬ 
er to prevent certain unprincipled men from getting 
the nomination. I worked faithfully until those 
same “unprincipled men” called on me in my own 
home and demonstrated to me beyond the shadow of 
a doubt that they were clean as the newly fallen 
snow and that I was doing them a great wrong. 
Then I quit and they were nominated and defeated 
at the election so I felt I had done excellent work 
on both sides. I must close this part of my experi¬ 
ence in the community church by telling you that 
I felt highly elated by the glorious avenues of use¬ 
fulness that had opened for me. It is true, member¬ 
ship and leadership in all these avenues of usefulness 
required time, but I am the pastor's wife and like 
the pastor himself have not much to do. 


96 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

After we had come to the end of all these bids 
and requests and opportunities for usefulness, I 
said to Hub, “Well, I guess you are satisfied that 
you have opportunities here which you never 
enjoyed in your quiet village congregation. Are 
you pleased or otherwise?” 

He made no reply except “Job 2:10.” But I con¬ 
tinued, 

“A little more then ten years ago you and I joined 
the matrimonial alliance, for better or for worse, 
and to try to have it for the better we clasped 
hands and solemnly pledged our honor and our love. 
I now without election, declare myself the president, 
secretary, treasurer and executive committee of our 
matrimonial alliance; and as such I herewith notify 
you that I demand some of your time aside from 
a few words when you come in at night and sneak 
to bed like a common clot, too tired to say ‘‘Good- 
night.” 

If you wish to keep up your membership with me, 
I insist you must keep up the little meetings we 
used to have, in the evening when we sat with clasp¬ 
ed hands and said nothing but looked into the fire 
on the open grate and thought of nothing except 
that we assured ourselves that we owned each other 
and each had his richest possession in the other. 
If you wish to rob the rose of our life of its beauty 
and waste its sweetness because yau and I must 
jump at the beck of every community that commutes 
more than it communes for the best welfare of our 
community; and uses politics in the sacred name of 
patriotism, then you are no longer the man you 
were when we came to this place.” 

He felt that saying, “Job 2:10” would not excuse 
him any more than it would satisfy me; so he said; 
“You must remember that I get a salary twice as 
large as I did in our first charge. These people 
expect more because they pay.” 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MARY JANE 


97 


“Yes, you get twice what you did in the village 
church, but you still do not get more than two- 
thirds as much as the plasterer and the bricklayers; 
but then theirs is “skilled labor” and if they were 
paid less they would go on strike. And to think 
of what a fool I was. I had a chance of becoming 
the wife of a skilled mechanic. Instead I married 
a man who serves the people largely because it is 
such a splendid opportunity to do heroic service. 
Your salary in this community church is all provid¬ 
ed for before you get it, for the payment of dues, 
donations and dons. How can you attend all the 
banquets, suppers and functions, prepare all the 
speeches and toasts for this that and ‘something 
entirely different?’ I do not see how you have 
any money for necessary things, or time to prepare 
your regular Sunday addresses and other church 
speeches.” 

My husband listened patiently; and long before 
I was through, for I had many things to tell him 
in addition to the above, he wearily took up his hat 
and left the room. 

I forgot to tell you that his first Council meeting 
was a trial. Mr. Loof realizing that there was no 
quorum, moved that they proceed to business. He 
told my husband where everyone of the absentees 
was that particular evening. Societies, clubs and 
orders were having such important meetings that 
particular evening, that there was sufficient excuse 
for the absence of every one of them. For the same 
reason these same people were absent from the mid¬ 
week service. In short, they were the busiest set 
of men I have ever met. 

These same men demonstrated to my pastor, that 
any preacher who did not belong to the chamber of 
commerce and to the different civic organizations 
could not hope to win men to Christ.—The very 


98 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

thing we had come to do. I saw that winning men 
to Christ was done quite differently from what it 
had been done when my husband first entered the 
ministry. It now was a social function, and no long- 
erthe preaching of the word. If he did not go to the 
community sing, if he did not belong to the volun¬ 
teer fire department he would certainly be a failure 
in that church. So I told him; but he said nothing, 
gave me an unutterably weary look instead. Of 
late I noticed that look frequently, but I had said 
nothing. I felt that even now it was a poor time to 
talk; but I said, “Hub, I think it is high time that 
our chapter of the matrimonial alliance should have 
a meeting. Come home early.” 

We did hold a meeting that evening. We sat in 
the gathering shadows by a hot air register (There 
is no open fireplaces in this house, and half the 
charm and poetry of the “historic mansion’' is lack¬ 
ing.) I, the executive committee had just finished 
my report and I was feeling for his hand, to stroke 
it in the old loving way, when the door bell rang. 
With the words, “we must do the best we can” has¬ 
tily spoken, he made for the door, for it had rung a 
second time. I heard him say, “Come in, come in, 
I am so glad to see you.” I knew he was lying a 
diplomatic lie, but I was shocked. I slipped out of 
the room, went up stairs to bed and cried myself to 
sleep from sheer weariness and disappointment. 

So the work in the community church began; 
and so it dragged its wearying, exacting lengths 
across the years. Each year with its old and new 
burdens stooped my pastor a little more, and brought 
weary lines into his face and took the elasticity 
out of his steps. It took the roses out of my cheeks, 
quenched the sparkling fires that once burned in 
love, and lumped the knuckles on my once dainty 
girlish fingers. 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


99 


Those years bring joy—the simple joy of help¬ 
ing someone toward the gates of life, a joy known 
only to those who taste it. To lift someone out of 
the slough of bad habits and sinful lust, and help 
plant his feet upon the Rock Christ Jesus, is a serv¬ 
ice angels cannot give and Christ Jesus only can 
fully reward. 

There are only three ways of honoring God and 
helping man; first by the consecration of property; 
secondly by bearing witness to the truth with an- 
oited lips and consecrated life, and, thirdly, by be¬ 
ing much in prayer. A consecrated minister is cal¬ 
led upon to glorify God and help his fellowmen in 
all of these ways. In this community church the gate 
to service and self denial is never closed. The shew 
bread, the golden lamp and the altar of incense 
are three articles of furniture in our soul's experi¬ 
ence here, that are constantly visited and at which 
my husband and I are priest, and priestess; nor is 
it far to the Holiest of all for us. God speaks to us. 
With all the burdens of service and our feeling of 
the need of prayer, we have glorious times in the 
holy of holies—our own home—to which the mul¬ 
titude cannot enter any more than can see the vis¬ 
ion except as it is translated before them into serv¬ 
ice. 


100 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


CHAPTER XIII 

THE EVANGELIST 

“That man may last, but never lives 
Who much receives and nothing gives. 

Whom none can love, none can thank. 

Creation’s blot—creation’s blank.” 

My pastor and I had many wonderful and ludi¬ 
crous experiences whilst he was the shepherd of that 
uncommon community flock. The members for the 
most part had a keen eye to business and saw to it 
that they did not pauperize their pastor by discounts 
and presents. What I mean can best be illustrated 
by an example. The rich man dies and there are 
many mourners about his tomb. The poor man dies 
and there is no cortege to the grave that will soon 
be covered with a natural blanket of living green, 
renewed with each covering of spring, every renew¬ 
al a fit emblem of the resurrection. But in the case 
to which I refer there was no rich cortege and no 
mural decoration, for the widow, the sole surviving 
heir was too stingy. The best illustration of her keen 
thrift is seen by the fact that whilst her husband's 
corpse was still in the house, she summoned all to 
whom she was about to be indebted because of her 
husband's death and paid them off in trade dollars, 
which on the day of the burial of her husband, by 
the decree of the Government (of course without 
any reference to his death), would be worth only 
85 cents. My pastor received exactly three of these 
trade dollars as an expression of appreciation for his 
numerous visits during the illness of her uncherish¬ 
ed husband and for performing the last rites. A 
keener eye to business and foresight, coupled with 
strict honesty is seldom seen. We never went to 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MARY JANE 101 


the rich widow to find out whether she got rid of 
all trade dollars at par, but let us hope she did. 

On another! occasion he performed a marriage 
ceremony for which the well-to-do groom gave him 
a twenty-dollar gold piece, but exacted in turn the 
pastor's kiss for his bride, the copy of the liturgy 
with which he performed the ceremony and two 
marriage certificates, because he wished “to have 
the worth of his money." We can't blame him, but 
we cite the experience as an illustration of frugality. 
That same bridegroom not many years afterward 
committed suicide, possibly because of the knowl¬ 
edge of his prodigious waste on his wedding day. 

But there were other experiences which we treas¬ 
ure among the richest jewels that sparkle in memo¬ 
ry's casket. Among them the dying testimony of 
C. C. He was professor of the district High School 
and constantly warned his pupils against the sin of 
unchastity. Perhaps it was because he so often 
gathered his pupils around the slimy pit and with 
them gazed into its God-forbidden depths, that he 
finally slipped into it himself. In fact I have known 
some apparently very good people who have given 
as an excuse for going to the theatre simply that 
they went to see whats wrong, if there is any wrong; 
and to the slums to study the problem of reclama¬ 
tion and redemption. I suppose a certain amount 
of that kind of study is good. I have generally found 
when I go to such a theatre to see what is good and 
what is bad, I have to fight the devil for days after to 
rid my soul of dirty pictures of the play. I think it is 
about as wise to go to the theatre to get lessons in 
morality as to go to the devil to hear him quote 
scripture. He is not the character to do it, nor is 
he in the place the Christian ought to frequent. 

When the peculiar pains which come to the de- 


102 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MARY JANE 

votee to lust first racked his muscles he stretched 
out his hands to the physician and when my pastor 
came to him to point him to the Great Physician 
he said he had broken nature's laws and must simp¬ 
ly endure the consequences. No doubt his vigorous 
system would ere long throw off the poison and he 
would be strong and well. But in spite of his young 
and once vigorous manhood, in spite of what his 
physician could do, the muscles of his face became 
tense, for his constitution suffered, his flesh retract¬ 
ed from his bones and he looked more like a Syrian 
leper than the genteel, intelligent, vigorous High 
School professor he had been only a year before. 

In those days he streched out his hands to God. 
His young pastor began his first experience in point¬ 
ing sin-sick, erstwhile vocational expert to the Lamb 
of God, slain for the world's sinners. Perhaps it was 
his own lack of spiritual experience, perhaps be¬ 
cause his professor in pastoral theology in the semin¬ 
ary spent more time in emphasizing other things 
than this thing before which all others pale into 
insignificance, the thing of leading a sinner directly 
to the fountain of his blood to be washed and cleans¬ 
ed, that his progress was slow and his method im¬ 
perfect. He did succeed in getting his poor friend 
to apprehend Christ. When the time came for the 
passing of C. C. he bade us farewell. When he came 
to say his last words to his pastor, he stretched out 
his withered hands and in a voice clear and strong 
said. 

“Good-bye, brother, you did your duty by me! 
When you come over there I'll bear my testimony 
to what you have done for me." 

Since that time my pastor has been used to point 
other souls to the Lamb of God, but across the years 
which have, under God, given him other triumphs, 
there comes the memory of that testimony. He 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MARY JANE 103 

confidently hopes, when the last scene of earth has 
faded, there will be C. C. to introduce him to the 
angels and the church of the firstborn, which C. C. 
has learned to know. Surely no dismal failure with 
other souls in the age of darkness can ever eclipse 
the joy and the memory of that first triumph. 

Among others who were taken out of this life 
when they were still young and this earth life held 
glorious possibilities, is G. H. He contracted tuber¬ 
culosis from his mother, who with all her children 
died of the same malady, and my pastor was there 
during a period of nearly ten years to support them; 
rather guide the hand fumbling in the dark of those 
last months of life, to grasp the shining hand that 
never lets go when others must. When G. H. the 
first of the four, was too weak for days to rise and 
had become indifferent to scenes about him, he one 
day called his mother from an adjoining room: 

“Mother, I am going now. They have come for 
me. One of them has a cornet. What delicious 
music!” 

Surely his dying was a delicious triumph! You 
ask, “So you believe in the teachings of spiritism! 
Our friends do come back?” 

I reply, spiritism is demonism. I believe in de¬ 
monology, and I believe that every demon is an 
emissary from the devil sent to trap and deceive 
every soul that seeks to have intercourse with the 
departed. 

Not all the ransomed are dead that were brought 
into the church during my pastor’s ministry. Some 
are still adorning their life with a godly walk. H. 
G. was far down on the highway to perdition, when 
nearly everything had slipped from his grasp, busi¬ 
ness, money, respect of his associates—everything 
in fact except the love of his faithful wife and the 
innocent trust of his little children. My pastor, dur- 


104 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 


ing a casual pastoral visit one Saturday afternoon, 
led him to Christ. It was not the wisdom nor power 
of my pastor that did it. He was the instrument of 
God because of the prayers and example of his faith¬ 
ful wife. 

H. G. is still living. He owns a business block on 
a prominent corner in his city. His once little child¬ 
ren are now grown, except two of them, who have 
gone to the ransomed in glory. The remaining three 
have founded homes of their own and are each one 
of them respected and successful citizens in the com¬ 
munity in which they live. Their lives are full of 
good works. 

There is another example of a different type of 
saints, which I still see when I sit and think of the 
diverse characters my husband's life has touched. 
I refer to 'old Mr. M.” I introduce him as the 
elegant but sonorous saint. Many in the commun¬ 
ity have their doubts about his “saintliness." But 
every believer born again is a saint in the Scriptu¬ 
ral and etymological sense. Old Mr. M. was elegant 
because of his neat personal appearance and the 
fact that whenever he sat down he pulled up his 
pants so as to preserve the creases. When he knelt 
he spread his handkerchief even though the floor 
was carpeted. I never asked him, but I feel sure 
that he has labored under the false impression that 
God is hard of hearing. Some unkind critics said 
that M's life during the week drove God so far away 
that it required vociferous calling on Sunday to 
coax him within hearing distance. He always closed 
those sonorous petitions with an epilogue very 
familiar to saint and sinner in the meeting: 

“When our conflict is ended, then, there in Abra¬ 
ham's bosom may we rest in peace!" (“Requiescat 
in pace" is carved on the old man's tombstone. He 
had it carved himself years before he requiescated). 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MARY JANE 105 


Well, old M. came near going to Abraham's bosom 
during an epidemic of fever. I never heard of any 
one who was so loath to be embraced by Abraham. 
How he did call for the pastor to pray for deliverance 
when he thought he was within kissing distance of 
the Father of the faithful. 

Poor old M. certainly had many a “conflict" and he 
often trailed the Lord’s banner through the mud, 
but he always waved it triumphantly after he had 
wrestled in prayer and I think he was sincere and 
on the day of his death entered the rest ‘‘in peace.” 

Poor man. He never knew the preciousness here 
of Paul's words: “Though wilt keep him in perfect 
peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.” His trouble 
was that of many others. His mind was not stayed 
on Christ. He had too many other props which he 
mistook for stays. 

I never did believe in extreme emotionalism any 
more than I did in ritualism, but we did have emo¬ 
tional examples in that community church. We 
had one young man and really pretty sister who at 
anj* moment and j with out any pre-arrangement, 
would monopolize the service by giving a piercing 
squeal, followed by a stiffening of her anatomy and 
throwing herself upon some adjacent member, male 
or female, according to proximity, she would then 
be borne by four into the rest room and from there 
when she was partly conscious she was loaded into 
the phaeton and her husband drove the spirited 
horse whild she herself apparently dispirited re¬ 
clined limply in the arms of her favorite boarder on 
the back seat, invariably that was the last act 
on the program. Just how to keep her from getting 
that sort of “a blessing” was a problem, the solu¬ 
tion of which vexed my pastor; but her husband 
Anally solved it by getting a divorce after which 
there was no more spirit left in her. 


106 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MARY JANE 


Do not misunderstand me. I do not think that 
one can separate emotion from religion. The sacred 
scenes depicted in the divine record imply it where 
its presence is not directly emphasized. 

On the Mount of Transfiguration when the pur¬ 
est man that ever lived, my divine Lord, and two of 
the saints from the world of glory made up half of 
the most unusual and unheard of sextette ever as¬ 
sembled on earth, the vascillating and trembling 
Peter could not keep his mouth shut. He never 
could on any great occasion. He always bubbled 
over. “Lord, it is good for us to make three taber¬ 
nacles,” etc. 

On the way to Emmaus the hearts of the disciples 
burnt within them. When the heart burns within 
the eye has not tears enough to put out the fire. 
What we do regret is that hypocrisy should simu¬ 
late the expression of holiest emotions. 

The Episcopalian and all his ritualistic brethren 
may clothe their emotions in the universal “halle¬ 
lujah” which comes in response to the “priest's” 
declaration of Holy Scripture, but that word so iden¬ 
tical in all languages, was first exploded on human 
lips when the Hebrew heart was filled too full for 
any other utterance. 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MARY JANE 107 


CHAPTER XIV 
A NEW HOME 

Rev. Dr.—the evangelist, has been in our city, 
making the devil mad and getting his Satanic Maj¬ 
esty to exert himself to undo any good that the 
evangelist tried to do. I know he made the devil 
mad because his best friends and minions never 
said so many bitter things against their neighbors, 
business associates and the pastors who co-operate 
with the Evangelist in his four weeks campaign. 
Although many of them are church members they 
have always favored the liquor traffic more than 
they favored temperance and sobriety. Many past¬ 
ors of orthodox churches who do not believe in the 
methods of the evangelist (and I am sure the meth¬ 
ods of the evangelist are not above criticism, yea, 
are open to it) have alligned themselves with the 
efforts of the Pharisees and hypocrites and openly 
wicked, to counteract the work of the pastors and 
their people. 

The evangelist required a through organization 
of the co-operative choirs. The different choirs be¬ 
came one grand chorus choir, led by a man whom the 
evangelist sent. He appointed a committee of help¬ 
ers, one man to lead in his absence. We had noon¬ 
day and evening prayer-meetings, where the voice 
of prayer and the cheering words of an evangelical 
hymn had not been heard ever; and after praying 
for more than a week we had forgotten our dif¬ 
ferences and say very few mean things about each 
other. We had begun to think that old M. who had 
been reeling along our streets and cursing and swear¬ 
ing for the last 20 years, really had a soul, and he 


108 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

was made the “subject of prayer” The churches 
have rented an unfurnished house and furnished it 
and hired a retinue of servants, so the evangelist 
and his corps of workers may be close enough to 
each other for conference and undisturbed by cank¬ 
ering, worldly care. We had planned and worked for 
the coming of the evangelist as we never thought 
of working and planning for any one or all of the 
pastors in our city. Somehow the busiest of us seem 
to have more time now for extra work than we ever 
had in all our lives. It is wonderful how helpful 
everybody is and how willing we are to send flowers 
to the sick and get up donations to the poor of whom 
there are not a few in our town. 

Our Sunday School superintendent has given up 
cards and all the euchre parties have been cancelled 
and Madame La Carte's dancing school has not a 
church member or Sunday school member taking 
lessons. The people who attended the dances used 
to consider the Madame eminently respectable, but 
now poor Madame gets scant support, and it said 
she intends to leave town. 

All this took place before the evangelist came. 
Last evening the whole religious menagerie arrived. 
We escorted them up to their newly furnished house. 
Our best band led the parade. The evangelist's 
phalanx came immediately behind the band in coach¬ 
es and we, the workers followed four abreast, walk¬ 
ing and singing with accompaniment of the band 
who played, “Blest be the tie that binds'' and “On¬ 
ward Christian Soldiers." I am sorry the parade 
took place, not because the liturgical great church 
member and the devil’s children smiled and even 
made insinuating remarks; but because we honored 
these people before they did any work themselves 
or brought anybody to Christ. There was more 
pomp and gratification of the flesh in that parade 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MARY JANE 109 


than there is in all the processionals of all the 
liturgical churches of our town for a year. Ever 
since I am sure of one thing, we haven’t been leav¬ 
ing our work every day for an hour to pray to help 
the devil and we haven’t felt the least bit devilish 
either. I am sure also that the evangelist’s preach¬ 
ing does not flatter the devil or apologize for his 
work or workers. He does lie down on the floor and 
get up on chairs and upsets the water pitcher and 
knocks chairs off the platform so that now “the 
chief men of the synagogue” that the first two even¬ 
ings sat within whispering distance keep the space 
clear around the evangelist. It’s safer. He does 
make telling remarks and must know some of the 
people of this town and some of the members of our 
church better than most of us. In fact I felt quite 
sure the other night that he referred to me per¬ 
sonally, and it made me feel not sad, nor exactly 
mad, but the feeling that results from mixing those 
two emotions—terribly aggrieved. What right has 
he anyhow to clothe my skeleton thoughts that keep 
spooking in my brain with the garb of his imagina¬ 
tion and parade them in almost tangible reality be¬ 
fore everbody. It was the night he preached on “As 
a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” 

Of course you do not care to know all the evon- 
gelist said and how he got us to come forward and 
re-consecrate ourselves and take him by the hand 
as a token of our determination to live up to our pro¬ 
fession, and numbered us among the newly convert¬ 
ed. It is one of the ways in which the evangelist 
unwittingly showed us, how human, how imperfect 
and how like the hypocrites whom he so strongly 
condemns, he himself is. 

The papers of the town give faithful accounts 
of the attendance, the number of conversions each 
night, the sermon, the solos, and distinguished visit- 


110 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

ors who sit on the platform and make speeches laud¬ 
ing what the evangelist did in their town. 

The devil is working his faithful many hours 
over time planning defeats of the work and workers, 
and unpleasant surprises in almost every edition 
of the papers. 

So the sermons and rallies and conferences have 
been bowling along and acquring momentum, until 
now that evangelist party has concluded its engage¬ 
ment. It is leaving, but not as it came. In fact 
the larger part of the workers have left to train 
the co-operative members in jthe church among 
whom the next campaign takes place. In a lone 
automobile some time after the last meeting from 
some place the evangelist will suddenly appear and 
be driven to the next place where he is scheduled. 
There he will be welcomed as we welcomed him. His 
enemies here have given him little time to say good 
bye and in fact are making this unobtrusive depart¬ 
ure necessary. He has told us he hates tears and 
excitement incident to departure, but} we doubt 
whether he is sincere in sparing us this last wrench¬ 
ing of heart. But then Paul left Damascus in a 
basket. 

We had a more serious parting, my husband and 
I, than saying good-bye to the evangelist. We were 
compelled to say good-bye to Maggie. 

We always, my husband and I, said that we knew 
of no girl better fitted to become a pastor’s wife, 
than Maggie. We firmly believed that some day a 
divinity student, or even a widower, whose wife 
the Lord mercifully released from the arduous dut¬ 
ies of pastor’s wife, would come and capture her; 
but as year after year rolled away, we began to fear 
lest all her feminine tenderness and sweetness would 
never be discovered and so she might fail to enrich 
a manse, much less be a helpmate to some pastor. 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 111 


Have you ever noticed that young preacherB are 
apt to be dazzled by some meteoric display of wit 
and smile and cosmetics, rather than by real honest- 
to-goodness qualities of head and heart? Well they 
are. Quite as many girls miss their calling when 
they marry preachers as young men miss theirs, 
when they take “holy orders.” Some philanthrop¬ 
ist ought to found a seminary for the training of 
preacher’s wives. He would accomplish lasting good, 
perhaps largely by prevention, for the congrega¬ 
tions, the pastors and the candidates themselves. 
That seminary probably would have few graduates 
if honest teachers were at the head of it, but it 
nevertheless Would be a- real philanthrophy and 
money well spent. 

Few girls would care to have their names publish¬ 
ed in the catalogue of such an institution. But why 
not have them begin their course of study after 
their engagement has been announced? To mat¬ 
riculate in such a seminary then would be no more 
compromising of the modesty than matriculation in 
a cooking school and prove a wider benefaction and 
blessing. 

Few young men enter the ministry without know¬ 
ing at least in some degree the duties which de¬ 
volve upon the pastor and are in a measure prepared 
for them, but very few girls who marry preachers 
know what God and congregations expect of them 
and so their whole life is a disappointment, if not a 
tragedy. It is about as difficult humanly, so far 
as effort avails, to make a preacher’s wife out of 
butterfly feminity as it is to make a china dish out 
of an earthen flower pot. 

But I started to tell you the earthly destiny of 
Maggie. She never married a minister. There was 
too much of the aroma of heaven in her everyday 
life and too little of the bouncing buxomness which 


112 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

appeals even to the most high-collared, white-tied 
parson. No pastor ever asked her to be his wife 
and she did not die of a broken heart in consequence, 
or allow her rich spiritual life to waste. She be¬ 
came a deaconess after she took the prescribed 
course in training. Her affections have a wider 
compass and her spiritual life a richer fruition than 
if she had become the mistress of a manse and the 
mother of an offspring as apt to become a special 
target for the devil as the exponent and example of 
virtue in a preacher's home. 

But I am writing the biography of Mary Jane, my 
pastor’s wife and not that of Maggie, so I here and 
now let her pass out of our experience in the com¬ 
munity church, although the narrative of her life 
is quite as worth while as that of anybody who fig¬ 
ures in these pages. Even is she does only half 
as much for humanity as a deaconess as she would 
have done had she become a pastor's wife, she will 
be appreciated, whereas, if she would have done it 
in the capacity of a pastor's wife she wauld have 
been criticized or even maligned, and that by some 
of the “sisters" in the church. 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MARY JANE US 


CHAPTER XV 

IN A NEW LAND 

“He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must 
carry the wealth of the Indies with him.” 

I am making this entry in my diary in a strange 
land. We have gone far away from the community 
church in the Key-Stone State, and far away from 
the quiet village jin which; stands the 1 “historic 
house” and the church in which the “Bushel Choir” 
made discords and believed them sweetest airs. We 
have gone far away from the clover blossoms and the 
fields waving in growing crops, the little village 
with its narrow streets everywhere jostled with 
homes big and little, the stately farmhouses with 
their white-washed walls framing green shutters 
and glistening glass, above all—from the dear faces 
that smiled as they helped us to begin life together 
on the great white way of usefulness that by His 
grace will bring us to “the city that has foundation 
whose builder and maker is God.” 

There will be some of those dear saints there, ex¬ 
pecting us, for many of them folded their hands in 
everlasting repose years and some only months ago, 
and when they went the peace of God transfigured 
their care-worn features with the calm and dignity 
of the righteous’ death. 

We have crossed the wide prairies looking for all 
the world like a great ocean of green unruffled by 
storm and dotted here and there by a village or ham¬ 
let, like some resting craft at anchor. 

But we have also climbed mountain ranges and 
looked down their naked, rocky sides into canyons 
so narrow and deep that the sun kisses only for an 


114 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY JANE 

hour or two the ferns that lift their fronds to 
embrace the genial light. The engineers which 
staked the trails along which the great pon¬ 
derous engines drag the trains accomplished the 
apparently impossible. They overcame the ap¬ 
parently insurmountable grades by rising a little 
each foot as they wended their way, very much 
as we overcome our difficulties, a little each day un¬ 
til finally the hardest tasks are finished, the roadbed 
of character is laid, the heights are scaled and we 
get a vision of the beyond with its rich, untried 
possibilities, visions and possibilit es we could never 
have attained had we not climbed. 

Hour after hour our train has climbed until it 
attained dizzy heights and visions of rare beauty, 
and then it more quickly plunged into deep canyons, 
until it seemed to us that we were being swallowed 
into chaos of rock and gurgling waters and unfath¬ 
omed chasms, some unfinished and fumbled creation 
of the Great-World-Maker. 

When I was a little child my little world was 
bounded by the wall of my humble home. As I grew 
older it expanded until it embraced the village, and 
later the city. Now I am really away from home for 
the first time. I realize for the first time how much 
materal of every kind God must have had when He 
made the United States. He used it so wonderfully 
and lavishly in making this Our Country a fit place 
in which to do our best. Really if we fail as did the 
nations before us and make a mess of it, it will be 
the greatest failure of any people in history. 

But I am writing this in California. We have all 
heard so much and read so much about California 
that it is impossible to say anything about it that 
has not already been said a hundred times in as 
many different ways by poet and dreamer, miner 
snd herder, real estate agent and sucker, in prose 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MARY JANE 115 


and poetry, exploitation and cursing, that I must 
not attempt to seek to add or detract from what 
has been written. 

It is true that mountain and ocean, vale and can¬ 
yon, sea-shore and desert, summer and winter, 
showers and fruits are all so closely grouped as if 
nature had gathered her products and sceneries 
from far and arranged them in the Golden State for 
all the world to see and admire. 

It seems as though God when he had finished 
world-making elsewhere, had taken the most valu¬ 
able and pleasing of all that is bewildering, pleasing, 
surprising and awe-inspiring and arranged them in 
California. If He some day rids it from the flotsam 
and jetsam of all the abominations that are const¬ 
antly drifting into the state and whirling and cir¬ 
cling here, if he prunes all the bad and ingrafts 
all the good, this State will be Eden restored. 

Then the business of the realtor will be at an end, 
for no one will lease, rent or sell the strip of the 
garden he occupies. That will be advantageous, for 
if the realtor finds a place he will not do what the 
devil did in Eden, corrupt the paradise and curse its 
inhabitants. I must give the realtor his due. The 
real estate agent lays out tracts, and adorns them 
with paved streets. He plants trees and places grass 
plots, builds homes and sells them, at a profit it is 
true, but in such a way that a poor man can finally 
own his own home. 

Here you meet the neighbor you had at home in 
the East, your college chum and the girl you loved. 
You find she is married and is fiendishly pleased to 
invite you to her home at least once, so that you 
may see her gold and her glory! or you will meet 
some of your friends who have become so poor in 
their chase over mountains and plains to the very 
edge of the Pacific, the fickle goddess, and now fall 


116 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MARY JANE 


in with you in the nick of time to save them from 
an untimely grave. You find many opportunities 
to do rescue work of that kind, and to be done in 
turn in ways that are past finding out. You are 
never unattended in California. 

You learn from a hundred lips that none makes 
a mistake who leaves for good and forever the pet¬ 
rified East frozen in winter and thunder riven in 
summer. The biggest mistake you can make will 
be made when you return. If you have any fore¬ 
sight, hindsight, insight, or sight at all, you can see 
this for yourself ? so why should he worry ? 

California is the birthplace of films. Miles and 
miles of them are reeled here and then routed to 
travel into city after city and theatre after theatre 
everywhere in the United States. In this world of 
the make-believe only a board fence seperates hovels 
from palaces, police courts from scenes of daring 
robberies, funeral scenes from weddings, cathedrals 
from mining camps, country scenes from publis 
squares in supposedly great cities. The begger and 
the millionaire, the hold-up and police who arrest 
him, youth and maidens each and all make up this 
counterfeit of real wealth, real poverty, real joy and 
real sorrow. This sham life is infectious. No one 
is quite free from it even though he has never prac¬ 
ticed the deceits in the studios, he somehow learns to 
practice them with the unsuspecting public. 

There are few places in all the world where men 
are paid big salaries to kiss someone else’s wife, to 
risk life and limb in feigning rescues from dangers 
existing only in make-belief, to make us laugh and 
cry where there is no real excuse for either mirth 
or sorrow. All the actors, live, whilst at work, in 
this unnatural and faked world, the life of gambling 
monkeys, gay and richly plumed parrots, prancing, 
skipping idiots and Charlatans, beautiful princess- 


THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MARY JANE 117 


es, brave knights, kings and asses. To-day they are 
in mansions surrounded by retinues of servants and 
tomorrow they play the role of servants themselves. 

After all these makers of films remind us of what 
exists in real life. Today it is a stomach and no 
food, tomorrow, food and incapacity to digest and 
assimilate, honor without desert, merit without 
honor, beauty of an angel with disposition diaboli¬ 
cal. Such are the pranks of fate—such, giddy fort¬ 
une's fickle wheel in real life. 

The people of this favored land are eminently 
religious. In this respect also they are not different 
from those in other states and nations. With all 
people now-a-days there is every shade of creed. 
Some of them are based on the Bible, others on what 
the Bible condemns. There is divine healing 
which the divine Son never practiced. There 
is no longer any need of atonement because there 
si no sin. There is no need of salvation through 
Christ because every man can save himself. We 
are rich and have need of nothing that we cannot 
supply ourselves. That is why our jails are so full, 
murders so frequent, crimes so diabolical and judg¬ 
ment and destruction so imminent. 

It is indeed sad for the Christian pastor and 
teacher who for years has worked with men and 
women whom he considered the very elect, to find 
here and everywhere that they have renounced 
their faith, bartered their hope of heaven, 
forgotten their prayers and lost jewels from their 
crown in heaven. 

But we are in California, and if you, kind reader, 
will ever hear of another entry in this diary, an¬ 
other chapter in this biography, it will have been 
written with the same faith in ‘‘God manifest in 
the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, 
preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, 
received up into glory.” 


































































































































































































































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